Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. l l, No.

3, 1982

If the Boy Loves the Girl and the

Girl Loves the Dog, Does the Boy
Love The Dog?: The Overgeneralization
o f Verbal Transitive Inference Skills

Stan A. Kuczaj IF and Sam A. Donaldson III

Accepted January 26, 1981

Two studies investigated 4- to lO-year-old children's capacity to make verbal transitive

inferences. The results of the two studies suggest that the development of transitive in-
ference skills follows a specific to general developmental path, and that children over-
general&e their verbal transitive inference skills to inappropriate relational terms prior to
determining the general principle that underlies the use of relational terms in transitive
sentences.

INTRODUCTION

The ability to make inferences underlies many cognitive activities, includ-

ing language and conceptual skills. Thus, the fact that the young child can
productively employ language and create concepts strongly suggests that
the young preschool child possesses the cognitive sophistication neces-
sary for inferential activity. However, just as language and conceptual
abilities improve with age, so might inferential abilities. One example of
an inferential skill (or set of inferential skills) that improves with de-
velopment is that which underlies transitive inference. In a basic transi-
tive inference, the fact that one entity (A) bears some relation (R) to

lAddress all correspondence to Stan A. Kuczaj II, Department of Psychology, Southern

Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275.
197

0090-6905/82/0500-0197503.00[0 9 1982 Plenum PublishingCorporation

198 Kuczaj and Donaldson

another entity (B), and the fact that entity B bears this relation to a third
entity (C), allows one to infer the relation that object A bears to object C.
For example, if Sue is smarter than Bill and Bill is smarter than Joan,
then Sue is smarter than Joan. Inferences involving more than three
objects may also be made if the objects bear particular relations to one
another.
Based on his investigations of the development of transitive inference
skills, Piaget (1970; Piaget, Inhelder, & Szeminska 1960) concluded that
children who had not achieved the period of concrete operational thought
(i.e., children younger than 7 years of age) were incapable of correctly
inferring transitive relations. However, subsequent research has found
that children as young as 4 years of age can make transitive inferences
(Bryant & Trabasso, 1971; Bryant, 1974). However, the young child per-
forms much better in a transitive inference task in which all of the in-
formation necessary for the inference is given to the child than in a
transitive inference task in which the child must discover the appropriate
information for the inference (Bryant, 1973). Still, it appears that 4-year-
old children can make transitive inferences and that the capacity for
transitive inference improves throughout the early elementary school
years. Thus, it would appear that 4- to 7-year-old children may be capable
of combining the information in a verbal statement having the form A R B
(Sue is nicer than Sam) and the information in a verbal statement having
the form BRC (Sam is nicer than Tony) and inferring that ARC (Sue is
nicer than Tony). However, it is not clear exactly how general this ability
is in the 4- to 7-year-old child. Numerous terms and phrases may enter
into transitive relations (is faster than, entails, is taller than, precedes),
and the transitive inference skills of the young child may be limited to a
small set of permissible terms and only gradually become more general. If
so, the verbal transitive inference skills of the child may be overly specific
initially and become more general with increasing development, this
specific to general developmental pattern having been observed in the
acquisition of a variety of language forms (Kuczaj & Brannick, 1979;
Maratsos, Kuczaj, Fox, & Chalkley, 1979).
Although certain aspects of language development follow a specific
to general developmental pattern, the initially overly specific language
forms may later be overgeneralized by the language-learning child. For
example, the use of modal auxiliaries such as can and will in appropriate
wh question position (immediately following the wh word, as in who will
the girl paint?) appears to be learned wh word by wh word rather than
generally and suddenly (Kuczaj & Brannick, 1979). However, children
later overgeneralize their knowledge of this sentential position rule to
Transitive Inference Skills 199

questions beginning with how come, resulting in erroneous constructions

such as how come will the frog jump in the water? Since many, but not all,
relational terms may enter in transitive relations (see Strawson, 1952;
Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, 1974), the development of verbal transitive
inference skills may follow this pattern: (1) an initial overly specific phase
in which the child understands only a few terms that may enter into
transitive relations, (2) gradual broadening of the relational bases for
terms that may enter into transitive relations, (3) overgeneralization of the
transitive inference to inappropriate terms such as love and kick, and (4)
the gradual elimination of such overgeneralization errors, resulting in the
eventual establishment of an appropriate scope of application of transitive
inference skills.
The purpose of the two investigations reported herein was to test the
above predictions about the development of verbal transitive inference
skills.

STUDY 1

Method

Subjects. Seventy-five children ranging in age from 4 years 4 months

(4,4) to 8 years 11 months participated as subjects. This sample was
divided into five groups of 15 children each, based on chronological age.
The groups had the following characteristics: Group I---9 females, 6
males; age range from 4,4 to 4,11; )~ age = 4,8. Group II--4 females,
11 males; age range from 5,0 to 5,11; 3{ age = 5,4. Group III--9 females, 6
males; age range from 6,1 to 6,11; 2{ age = 6,7. Group IV--9 females,
6 males; age range from 7,1 to 7,11 ; X age = 7,6. Group V--4 females, 1l
males; age range from 8,0 to 8,11; )? age = 8,5. All of the children were
enrolled in middle-class private day care centers in the Dallas metro-
politan area.
Procedure. Each child was tested individually. The child was first
seated across a table facing the experimenter. A group of toys was placed
in front of the child, after which the child was told that he or she would
participate in a game using one group of three toy animals or three toy
people at a time. The child was then told that the experimenter would say
something about a group and would then ask the child a question about
what had just been said.
The general procedure consisted of the child being read a pair of
sentences and then being asked a question about the animals or people in
200 Kuczaj and Donaldson

the two exposure sentences. Four of these pairs of sentences expressed

transitive relations, while four other pairs did not. The sentence pairs and
questions were as follows: (1) X runs faster than Y. Y runs faster than Z.
Show me everybody who runs faster than Z. (2) X eats more than Y. Y
eats more than Z. Show me everybody who eats more than Z. (3) X is
bigger than Y. Y is bigger than Z. Show me everybody who is bigger than
Z. (4) X jumps higher than Y. Y jumps higher than Z. Show me everybody
who jumps higher than Z. (5) X loves Y. Y loves Z. Show me everybody
who loves Z. (6) X hit Y. Y hit Z. Show me everybody who hit Z. (7) X
jumped on Y. Y jumped on Z. Show me everybody who jumped on Z. (8)
X shot Y. Y shot Z. Show me everybody who shot Z.
The order of presentation of the eight sentence pairs and correspond-
ing questions was randomized for each child. For each sentence pair set,
the experimenter selected a group of three animals or three people and set
them before the subject. Then the experimenter read the sentence pair,
inserting the names of the objects in place of the variables X, Y, and Z.
The child was then asked to show the experimenter which object or
objects made up his response to the query of concern. This procedure was
repeated for the remaining seven sentence pairs except that the child was
allowed to choose the set of three people or three animals. Whether the
set contained people or animals was specified at random by the experi-
menter. The entire procedure lasted approximately 10 minutes.
Scoring. Children's responses were scored in the following manner:
Responses to the transitive sentence pairs were scored as either correct
transitive responses or incorrect nontransitive responses. Responses to
the nontransitive sentence pairs were scored as either correct responses,
overgeneralized transitive responses (choosing both object A and object
B), or simple incorrect responses (the wrong object was chosen, but both
objects were not chosen).

Results

The main results center on the correct responses to both types of

sentence pairs and the incorrect transitive responses to the nontransitive
sentence pairs. These data are summarized in Table I.
Children were more likely to make correct nontransitive responses
than correct transitive responses F(1,70) = 4.11, p <.05. However, there
were no significant age trends in regard to correct or incorrect responses,
though older children tended to give more correct transitive responses
and more correct nontransitive responses than did younger children.
Transitive Inference Skills 201

Table I. Mean Number of Correct Transitive Responses, Correct Nontransitive

Responses, and Overgeneralized Transitive Responses
m

Response type

Age Correct transitive Correct nontransitive Overgeneralizedtransitive

4 1.5 2.2 1.2

5 1.4 2.5 1.0
6 1.7 3.0 .7
7 1.5 2.9 1.3
8 2.1 2.3 1.7

T h e r e is some support, however, for the notion that the child comes
to overgeneralize his transitive inference skills to inappropriate relations.
As s h o w n in Table I, such overgeneralized responses appeared in each
age group, though relatively infrequently. If these responses rest on an
overgeneralized skill, then one would expect to see significant correla-
tions b e t w e e n correct transitive responses and incorrect transitive re-
sponses. Such correlations were found for each age group. Group
I--r(14) = .62, p <.01; Group II--r(14) = .75, p <.01; Group III--r(14)
= .74, p <.01; Group I V - - r ( 1 4 ) = .54, p <.05; and Group V--r(14)
= .78, p <.01. It is not clear, however, that the correlations reflect the
same abilities at all ages. By looking at individual patterns of responding,
one sees an interesting developmental pattern emerge. Four- and 5-year-
olds w e r e more likely to consistently give overgeneralized transitive re-
sponses and correct transitive responses than to consistently give only
c o r r e c t transitive responses (X2(1) = 4.66, p <.05. Six- and 7-year-olds,
on the other hand, were more likely to consistently give only correct
transitive responses than to consistently give both correct transitive re-
sponses and overgeneralized transitive responses (X2(1) = 8.34, p <.01.
But 8-year-olds exhibit the pattern of 4- and 5-year-olds, being more likely
to consistently give both correct and overgeneralized transitive responses
than to consistently give only correct transitive responses, although this
t e n d e n c y failed to achieve statistical significance. This developmental
p a t t e r n suggests that both the overgeneralized and correct transitive
r e s p o n s e s o f the 4- and 5-year-olds may be based on a response strategy,
since c o r r e c t transitive responses were rarely observed in the absence of
overgeneralized transitive responses. Thus, 4- and 5-year-olds may not be
making transitive inferences at all but instead may be responding on the
202 Kuczaj and Donaldson

Table II. Number of Children in Each Age Group Who Gave Transitive Responses
to 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 of the Different Probe Questions, Each Question Using
a Different Relational Term

N u m b e r of transitive responses

Age 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

4 5 1 2 0 4 1 1 0 1
5 4 2 1 3 3 1 1 0 0
6 3 1 5 2 2 1 1 0 0
7 1 3 5 0 4 2 0 0 0
8 3 0 3 2 2 0 l 2 2
Total 16 7 16 7 15 5 4 2 3

basis of a response strategy. Six- and 7-year-olds rarely make over-

generalized transitive relations, though at least some of them do con-
sistently make correct transitive inferences, suggesting that during this
age range the correct transitive responses are no longer based on a re-
sponse strategy. Given that 6- and 7-year-olds do not appear to be em-
ploying a task strategy in producing transitive responses, the over-
generalization errors of the 8-year-olds may be true overgeneralization
errors as opposed to those of the 3- and 4-year-olds.
As revealed in Table II, children appear to initially learn which terms
may occur in transitve relations in a very gradual fashion, rather than
initially learning some general principle that is broadly applied.

Discussion

The above results support the hypothesized developmental pattern of

transitive inference skills. As hypothesized, children appear to learn
which terms may enter into transitive relations gradually and specifically
(term by term). Also as hypothesized, transitive inference skills become
more general with development, to the point that the child may inappro-
priately overgeneralize the transitive relation. Thus, the child must come
to correctly limit the scope of his transitive inference skills.
However, the results of Study 1 are not straightforwardly inter-
pretable. As noted earlier, it is likely that the transitive responses given
by the 4- and 5-year-old children reflect a response strategy rather than
the supposed inferential skills. This may also be true for the transitive
responses given by the older children, even the 8-year-olds. Study 2 was
Transitive Inference Skills 203

conducted in order to test this possibility, as well as to better determine if

a specific to general developmental pattern characterized the develop-
ment of transitive inference skills.

STUDY 2

Method

Subjects. Seventy children participated in Study 2. This sample

was divided into seven groups on the basis of chronological age. The
characteristics of each group were as follows: Group I--5 females, 5
males; age range from 4,0 to 4,10, )~ age = 4,5. Group II 4 females,
6 males; age range from 5,1 to 5,11, J~ age = 5,6. Group III---3 females, 7
males; age range from 6,2 to 6,11; J~ age = 6,7. Group IV--6 females,
4 males; age range from 7,0 to 7,11; Jf age = 7,6. Group V--5 females, 5
males; age range from 8,0 to 8,10; J~ age = 8,5~ Group VI--6 females,
4 males; age range from 9,1 to 9,9; ){age = 9,5. Group VII--5 females, 5
males; age range from 10,1 to 10,11; 3) age = 10,6.
Procedure. As in Study I, each child was tested individually. Also as
in Study 1, each child was exposed to a set of sentence pairs and a probe
question. Each set of sentence pairs reflected the form X relation Y and Y
relation Z, while each probe question reflected the form who relation Z?
There were six transitive relational terms (is cleaner, eats more, jumps
higher, is bigger, sleeps longer, is happier) and six nontransitive relation
terms (kicks, likes, pushes, hits, touches, kisses). The order of presenta-
tion of the six transitive sentence pairs and the six nontransitive sentence
pairs was counterbalanced in order to determine if the order of exposure
affected the results. However, within both the transitive sentence pair set
and nontransitive sentence pair set the order of presentation of the six
sentence pairs was randomized.
At the end of the presentation of the 12 sentence pairs, the child was
shown a group of three objects. The objects were then named in order to
familiarize the child with each object. The experimenter then asked the
child if any of the objects loved object Z (chosen at random). If the child
was responding on the basis of a task strategy to the first 12 sentence
pairs, then one might expect the child to choose both objects even though
there was no basis for doing so (no information had been provided the
child about the relations among the objects). This procedure was then
repeated with five other groups of three objects each (different objects in
each group), using different (nontransitive) relational terms with each of
the five groups. This task will be referred to as the strategy task.
204 Kuezaj and Donaldson

Table II1. Mean Number of Correct Transitive Responses, Correct Nontransitive

Responses, Overgeneralized Transitive Responses, and Strategy Task Transitive
Responses

Response type

Correct Correct Overgeneralized Strategy task

Age transitive nontransitive transitive transitive

4 1.2 3.7 1.1 .9

5 2.4 3.7 1.8 .6
6 2.9 4.5 1.2 1.2
7 3.1 5.1 .9 .3
8 4.5 3.6 2.1 0
9 5.2 2.6 3.4 0
10 5.6 4.6 1.3 0

Results

Table III summarizes the data obtained in Study 2. Correct transitive

r e s p o n s e s increased with age, F(6, 56) = 8.34, p <.001. This proved to be
the only significant developmental trend revealed by analyses of variance.
Analyses o f variance also revealed that order of presentation of the set of
six transitive sentence pairs and the set of six nontransitive sentence pairs
was not a significant factor.
T h e correlations among correct transitive responses, overgeneralized
transitive responses, and transitive responses to the strategy task provide
s o m e interesting information. The responses from the 4-year-olds yielded
significant correlations among correct transitive responses and over-
generalized transitive responses (r(9) = .81, p <.001), correct transitive
r e s p o n s e s and transitive responses to the strategy task ( r ( 9 ) = .72,
p <.001), and overgeneralized transitive responses and transitive re-
sponses to the strategy task (r(9) = .90, p <.001). Correct transitive re-
sponses and overgeneralized transitive responses were also significantly
c o r r e l a t e d for 5-year-old children (r(9) = .68, p <.002) and 9-year-old
children ( r ( 9 ) = .53, p <.009). N o other significant correlations were
found.
Table IV shows the number of terms to which each child gave transi-
tive responses. The data clearly illustrate the initial specificity of transi-
tive inference skills (i.e., the skills are applied to a limited number of
terms) and the later generality of the skills (i.e., the skills come to be
Transitive Inference Skills 205

Table IV. Number of Children in Each Age Group Who Gave O, 1, 2. . . . or i2

Transitive Responses in Response to the 12 Question Probes, Each Question
Using a Different Relational Term

N u m b e r of transitive responses

Age 0 t 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 t0 11 I2

4 6 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 t 0
5 2 2 0 0 1 1 1 1 I 0 t 0 0
6 l 1 1 1 1 3 0 I 0 1 0 0 0
7 2 0 0 2 1 t 3 0 0 l 0 0 0
8 0 0 0 1 2 0 3 1 1 0 0 2 0
9 0 0 0 1 2 1 1 0 0 0 1 2 2
10 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 0 2 0 2 0 0

Total 11 4 1 5 8 9 11 4 4 2 4 5 2

applied to a large number of terms). In fact, if one considers the very real
possibility that many of the transitive responses of the 4-year-olds are the
result of a response strategy rather than transitive inference skills, then
the initial specificity of the transitive inference skills becomes even more
apparent.

Discussion

The results of Study 2; .~port and clarify those of Study 1. The

transitive responses of the : ~r-old children in Study 2 seem to be the
result of a response strategy; since the children who gave correct transi-
tive responses and overgeneralized transitive responses also gave transi-
tive responses in the strategy task. This, however, was not true for the
older children who gave correct transitive responses and overgeneralized
transitive responses. Thus, the results of Study 2 demonstrate that
children do overgeneralize their verbal transitive inferen- skills. How-
ever, the results also demonstrate that transitive inference skills follow a
specific to general developmental pattern. Children appear to initially
learn to apply their transitive inference skills to a small number of appro-
priate terms, followed by a gradual broadening of the scope of application
of these skills. After the scope of application of the transitive inference
skills has been sufficiently broadened, the child overgeneralizes these
skills to at least some inappropriate relational terms (such as love). The
child then must learn to exclude such inappropriate terms from the reper-
206 Kuezaj and Donaldson

toire of terms that he or she has decided are appropriate for transitive
inferences. At the same time, however, the child must continue to add
new appropriate terms to this repertoire. It is possible, then, that the
development of transitive inferences is characterized by specific acquisi-
tions and specific exception-learning throughout development. Nonethe-
less, it seems likely that at some point in the development of transitive
inference skills, the child discovers some general principle that allows him
to then eliminate all inappropriate relational terms from the class of terms
he has previously decided are capable of entering into transitive relations
and to add new appropriate terms to this class. The basis of this general
knowledge would be the discovery that all relational terms may not enter
into transitive relations. Only relation terms that allow for the relative
ordering of two or more objects along some dimension may enter into
transitive relations, this in turn allowing one to relatively order other
objects relative to the initial two objects along this dimension. Thus,
relative ordering of objects along a common dimension is necessary for
transitive relations, and only terms that satisfy this condition are mem-
bers of the class of terms that may express transitive relations. It seems
likely that the child eventually acquires this general knowledge and so
abruptly ceases to apply transitive inference skills to inappropriate rela-
tional terms. However, the acquisition of this general knowledge rests on
the capacity of the child to glean generality from earlier specifiC acquisi-
tions, a capacity that also underlies much of the child's language and
conceptual development.

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