JSLHR
Research Article
When Do Children
Understand “Opposite”?
Catherine I. Phillipsa and Penny M. Pexmana
Purpose: The aims of the present research were to determine
(a) the age at which children with typical development
understand the concept of opposite, (b) whether this is related
to other cognitive abilities or experiences, and (c) whether
there is early implicit understanding of the concept.
Method: Children (N = 204) between 3 and 5 years of age
were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions in a
novel opposite task. Children’s language and working memory
skills were assessed, and parents provided information about
children’s access to learning materials about opposites.
Results: In the opposite task, 4- and 5-year-olds, but not
3-year-olds, demonstrated acquisition of the concept of
aving a concept of “opposite” is considered to be
H
a marker of typical lexical and conceptual devel-
opment (e.g., American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, 2008). This concept involves the lex-
ical semantic relation of antonymy, and acquisition of this
knowledge is a developmental achievement that likely sup-
ports, and is itself supported by, the acquisition of other
linguistic skills. Antonyms are pairs of words that are both
minimally and maximally different. They typically differ
maximally but only on a single dimension (e.g., length or
age); therefore, their meanings are simultaneously similar
and different (Clark, 1970; Jones, 2002; Murphy, 2003;
Owens, 2008). There is surprisingly little data on when
children actually understand that these words are opposite.
The purpose of the present study was to address this issue.
In order to understand the concept of opposite, a child
must learn that the meanings of some words are related,
that two words that form an antonymic pair have a binary
relationship with each other (Murphy, 2003), and the spe-
cific relationship that the words have with each other in
order to distinguish antonymy from other lexical semantic
a sections we review the literature and explain how our research
University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Correspondence to Penny M. Pexman: pexman@ucalgary.ca
Editor: Rhea Paul
Associate Editor: Jenny Roberts
Received August 11, 2014
Revision received November 14, 2014
Accepted April 25, 2015
DOI: 10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-14-0222
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 58 • 1233–1244 • August 2015 • Copyright © 2015 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
opposite. Children demonstrated this understanding only
when asked for the “opposite” one, suggesting that
antonymy was not made salient by stimulus properties
alone. Children’s accuracy was not significantly related
to their language or working memory skills, to their
child care experience, or to whether parents reported having
books or games about opposites or playing opposite
word games with children. Eye gaze analyses provided no
evidence for early implicit understanding of the concept
of opposite.
Conclusion: Children with typical development have a
concept of opposite by 4 years of age.
relations, such as synonymy. The challenge of abstracting
similarities across exemplars of opposite is illustrated in
recent computational modeling described by Chen, Lu, and
Holyoak (2010). The antonym relation was particularly
hard for Chen et al.’s model to learn, and they attributed
this to the fact that the dimensions of meaning on which
antonyms differ vary across antonym pairs; they stated,
“The shifting relevance of features makes learning a good
representation for antonyms challenging” (p. 876).
In the present work we focused on antonymous adjec-
tives. Though antonymous nouns (e.g., life–death) and
verbs (e.g., increase–decrease) also exist, we focused this
investigation on adjectives because adjectives lend them-
selves to manipulation and have been the focus of previous
studies on this topic. Our approach in the current work is
consistent with Murphy’s (2003) view of lexical relations as
metalinguistic concepts. Lexical semantic relations such as
antonymy constitute metalinguistic knowledge—conceptual
knowledge about words and the ways word meanings are
related. As such, acquisition of the concept of an opposite
can be demonstrated by correct identification of word pairs
that are opposites—that is, identification of word pairs that
share the semantic relation of antonymy. In the following
builds on what has been done by addressing limitations
in the metalinguistic studies of children’s understanding of
opposite that have so far been conducted.
Disclosure: The authors have declared that no competing interests existed at the time
of publication.
1233
Approaches to the Study of Antonym Acquisition
Empirical research assessing the development of the
concept of opposite generally concludes that appreciation
begins to develop around the age of 4 years (Clark, 1972;
Heidenheimer, 1975; Morris, 2003). However, there is also
some evidence of later (Kreezer & Dallenbach, 1929) and
earlier (Jones, 2007; Jones & Murphy, 2005; Murphy &
Jones, 2008) ages of acquisition and usage. These studies
fall into one of two categories: metalinguistic studies and
discourse studies.
Metalinguistic Studies
Metalinguistic studies evaluate children’s understand-
ing of antonym relations and their ability to work with the
metalinguistic vocabulary of opposition. To date, these stud-
ies primarily have involved verbal games wherein the child
responds to a question along the lines of “What is the oppo-
site of X?” The present research adopts a related approach.
The first study to investigate children’s appreciation
for the concept of opposite utilized a verbal response task
and was conducted by Kreezer and Dallenbach (1929). A
child was considered to know the concept of opposite if he
or she produced the corresponding antonym (e.g., fast in re-
sponse to slow) or if he or she utilized the strategy of nega-
tion (e.g., not fast). Kreezer and Dallenbach concluded that
50% of children could be taught the concept of opposite be-
tween the ages of 5;3 and 5;9 (years;months) and that a child
could learn the concept without instruction between the
ages of 8 and 9 years.
Further research revealed that the age of acquisition
of the concept of opposite is probably younger than was
initially found (Clark, 1972; Heidenheimer, 1975; Morris,
2003). With a similar verbal task, Clark (1972) found
that children as young as 4 years could provide a correct
opposite response to some of the stimulus words and that
5-year-olds provided more correct responses than 4-year-
olds. Morris (2003) also found that children between the ages
of 4 and 5 years were able to consistently generate opposites.
However, no effect of age was found; 4- and 5-year-olds
appeared to understand the concept of opposite equally well.
Also in contrast with the learning found by Kreezer
and Dallenbach (1929), Clark (1972) reported a distinct or-
der of acquisition: When making a semantically appropriate
substitution, children always replaced a difficult word with
an easier word but never the reverse. For example, a child
might replace tall with big in the tall–short word pair but
never the reverse (i.e., replacing big with tall in the big–small
pair). There was a correlation between age and the number
of semantically appropriate responses, which Clark (1972)
suggested was the result of children in the younger age
groups knowing the easier, less complex word pairs and none
of the more difficult word pairs. These results suggest that
the younger children tested knew the concept of opposite
but did not have a sufficiently developed vocabulary to suc-
cessfully perform the task with all word pairs.
Of consequence for all metalinguistic studies of oppo-
site, Kreezer and Dallenbach (1929) found that some children
1234 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 58 • 1233–1244 • August 2015
who stated that they did not know the concept of opposite
actually did know the relation but did not know the concept
label, and vice versa. This suggests that studies that rely
extensively on children’s verbal responses to reflect under-
standing of the word opposite, especially those that do not
provide any feedback during the course of the study (as in
Clark, 1972, and Morris, 2003), may be unnecessarily diffi-
cult for children.
Other relevant metalinguistic studies have examined
development of semantic relations with free association
tasks. These have shown that younger children tend to re-
spond with a word that is likely to follow the stimulus word
in a sentence (e.g., dark–night), whereas older children tend
to respond with a word that could replace the stimulus
word (e.g., dark–light; Entwisle, Forsyth, & Muuss, 1964).
This is referred to as the syntactic–paradigmatic shift, is
thought to occur between the ages of 5 and 9 years, and is
found mainly for high-frequency adjectives (Nelson, 1977).
Free association responses involving antonym relations
are among the paradigmatic responses produced. The age
of the shift may depend on the response task used (Jarman,
1980). Further, although it has been tempting to infer that
the free association task reveals the structure of semantic
memory, Nelson (1977) noted that the shift may also be
attributable to the child’s changing interpretation of the
task, in particular “the child’s changing ability to deal with
nonmeaningful verbal tasks” (p. 113).
The notion that antonym relations might be salient
for children only after 5 years of age could also be derived
from findings reported by Montgomery, Anderson, and
Uhl (2008). Montgomery et al. explored the mechanisms of
interference in the day–night task and found that semantic
competition for opposites was not strong in their sample
of 3- to 5-year-olds. Instead, children’s difficulty with the
day–night task was attributed to response set.
Discourse Studies
There is also evidence that children may produce anto-
nyms in their own speech before the age of 4 years. This
suggestion is supported by several studies that identify the
ways antonyms are used in discourse by children and adults.
Whereas the research reviewed thus far used elicitation tech-
niques, these studies used corpus-based approaches and ex-
amined the co-occurrence of antonym pairs in turns of speech.
Spontaneous usage of antonyms was found in chil-
dren as young as 2 years of age (Jones & Murphy, 2005;
Tribushinina et al., 2013). Results of discourse studies sug-
gest that children of all ages use most of the discourse func-
tions that have been identified in adult corpora. Overall,
the discourse functions used by children were found to be
simultaneously similar to and different from those used by
adults when speaking to children. Antonym use was always
proportionally greater in child-produced speech than in
child-directed speech and was found to increase significantly
with age in child-produced speech; this change was not
paralleled in child-directed speech (Jones, 2007; Jones &
Murphy, 2005; Murphy & Jones, 2008). On the basis of
these differences in the patterns of discourse function usage,
the authors tentatively concluded that children are not merely
reproducing the discourse functions that they hear most
often.
Discourse studies also show variability between indi-
vidual children in their ages and rates of antonym usage
(Jones, Murphy, Paradis, & Willners, 2012; Tribushinina
et al., 2013). Jones et al. (2012) noted that this variability
could be associated with parents’ usage and, possibly, chil-
dren’s access to books, organized child care, and other
learning opportunities. Further, young children who use
more explicit contrast in their own speech (e.g., “Give me a
big piece, not a small piece”) show stronger growth in ad-
jective production (Tribushinina et al., 2013). This use
of contrast is linked to parents’ tendencies to use the same
strategy in their own speech. Contrastive contexts are
thought to be important to adjective learning because they
facilitate attention to the specific dimensions on which ad-
jectives differ (Murphy & Jones, 2008; Tribushinina, 2013).
If children’s usage can be taken as a measure of their
understanding, or at least the initial stages of their devel-
opment of the concept of opposite, it is possible that children
may display an understanding of the concept of opposite in
a metalinguistic task before the age of 4 years if the task de-
mands are either changed or decreased (Jones, 2007; Murphy
& Jones, 2008). On the other hand, young children’s use
of antonymy in discourse simply may reflect learned asso-
ciations between words and be a developmental precursor
to children’s metalinguistic understanding of opposite. Last,
it is also possible that young children may understand the
lexical semantic relation of antonymy but not in a way that
is accessible at a conceptual level, which may be required
for correct responding in metalinguistic studies.
Murphy and Jones (2008) suggested that the metalin-
guistic studies conducted thus far may have failed to find
evidence that young children have the concept of opposite
because the response tasks used have been too difficult.
Although children may be able to use opposite words at a
young age (as revealed in discourse studies), their usage
does not indicate that they have the metalinguistic aware-
ness of opposite and the appreciation that words are ob-
jects, separate from their concrete and immediate context,
which are required for success in word association and
other metalinguistic tasks (Jones et al., 2012).
In addition, children’s performance in previous meta-
linguistic studies could have been hindered by the require-
ment of a verbal response to a prompt (Vilette, 2002).
Children’s verbal recall of an event can lag behind nonver-
bal measures of memory for the same event and can lag
behind general verbal skill (Simcock & Hayne, 2003). Thus,
there is the possibility that a more engaging and less ver-
bally demanding task would reveal more accurately the
development of children’s understanding of opposite. This
possibility was tested in the present study.
Present Research
The primary goal of the present study was to deter-
mine the extent to which young children have a concept of
Phillips & Pexman: Children’s Understanding of “Opposite”
opposite when it is evaluated with a task that does not re-
quire that children produce a verbal response and that as-
sesses children’s understanding of the meaning of the word
opposite across several antonym pair exemplars. In addi-
tion, we assessed the possibility that children might show
emerging sensitivity to the antonym relation before they
show this understanding in their overt behavior and investi-
gated whether other cognitive developments or learning
experiences are related to the development of the concept of
opposite.
The present study evaluated the development of the
concept of opposite in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds using adjec-
tives and a novel opposite task that assessed metalinguistic
understanding but did not require the child to make a ver-
bal response. By eliminating the need for a verbal response,
we addressed one limitation of previous metalinguistic stud-
ies of children’s understanding of the concept of opposite.
On each trial of the opposite task the child was presented
with three images. The experimenter labeled the images for
the child, selected one image, and then, using different
wording in each of three conditions, asked the child to
make a selection. In the “opposite-label” condition, the im-
ages were labeled with an adjective (e.g., big dog, small dog,
happy dog), and the child was asked to choose “the oppo-
site one.” The two remaining conditions were both control
conditions in that we included them to assess alternative
explanations for children’s behavior in the opposite-label
condition. In the “another-one-label” condition, the images
were similarly labeled, but the word opposite was not men-
tioned; the child was simply asked to choose “another
one.” This condition assessed the possibility that provision
of the adjectives alone (without instruction to provide the
opposite) might be sufficient for children to perform above
chance in the task. Last, in the “no-label” condition, the
images were labeled using basic-level category information
only (e.g., dog, dog, dog), and the child was again asked to
choose “another one.” This condition assessed the possibil-
ity that provision of the images alone (without adjectives or
instructions to provide the opposite) might be sufficient for
children to perform above chance in the task.
On the basis of prior research (Clark, 1972;
Heidenheimer, 1975; Morris, 2003), and the arguably re-
duced task demands in this task relative to the tasks used
in previous metalinguistic studies, it was hypothesized that
5- and 4-year-olds, and perhaps 3-year-olds, would demon-
strate a concept of opposite with above-chance perfor-
mance in the opposite-label condition of the opposite task
and that accuracy would improve with age. In contrast,
it was hypothesized that children in all age groups would
show chance performance in both control conditions unless
the adjectives and images (in the another-one-label condi-
tion) or images alone (in the no-label condition) were suffi-
cient to prompt correct responding.
We included eye gaze and latency measures so that
we could examine the process of understanding as well as
the product. There are numerous examples of research find-
ings showing dissociations between implicit or processing
measures (e.g., looking duration and response latencies)
1235
and explicit judgments (e.g., Nicholson, Whalen, & Pexman,
2013). For instance, research evaluating preschoolers’ under-
standing of linguistic ambiguity has demonstrated that
measures of implicit awareness can reveal sensitivity to lin-
guistic ambiguity before children are able to demonstrate
this awareness explicitly (Nilsen, Graham, Smith, & Chambers,
2008). We investigated whether early sensitivity to the con-
cept of opposite might be revealed with implicit measures.
Sensitivity to the concept of opposite might be different
compared with sensitivity to linguistic ambiguity. The chal-
lenge of the concept of opposite for young children may
be separating or abstracting from the stimuli the single rele-
vant dimension on which the meaning of each antonym
pair differs (Chen et al., 2010). Further, as proposed by
Jones et al. (2012), young children may understand the se-
mantic relation of antonymy but not in the conceptual
way required for successful task performance. As such, if
young children have some sensitivity to the relation be-
tween antonym pairs but struggle with the task demands of
selecting the opposite from among the two options, this
might be evident in their eye gaze and response latencies.
We adopted the assumption made by many language pro-
cessing researchers that “the mind is going where the eye is
going” (Trueswell & Gleitman, 2004, p. 320). As such,
younger children may be just as likely as older children to
look first to the target image (drawn to it by their sensitivity
to the antonym relation) but struggle to turn this sensitivity
into a correct task response and thus may be slower to re-
spond than older children. In addition, younger children
may have more total looks at the target image than older
children, reflecting more frequent looks back and forth
between images as they struggle to reconcile their under-
standing of the antonym relationship with the metalinguistic
task demands of choosing the opposite one.
There has, to our knowledge, been no previous exam-
ination of how understanding of the concept of opposite
is related to children’s cognitive and language skills or
learning experiences. As such, our examination of these re-
lationships was necessarily exploratory. Nonetheless, we
expected that children’s working memory and language
skills might be positively correlated with accuracy on the
opposite task. We expected that working memory might be
important to understanding the concept of opposite because
one needs to hold in mind the target word and its meaning
while retrieving the opposite word. There is also evidence
that preschool children’s listening comprehension is re-
lated to their working memory skills and their receptive vo-
cabulary (Florit, Roch, Altoè, & Levorato, 2009). It seems
plausible that listening comprehension skills are impor-
tant to children’s ability to attend to and learn from paren-
tal speech and to track speakers’ use of contrast. Indeed,
there is evidence that children’s antonym usage is related
to parents’ usage (Jones et al., 2012) as well as parents’ use
of contrast (Tribushinina et al., 2013). As such, children
with stronger working memory and receptive vocabulary
skills might have a more advanced concept of opposite and
thus could be relatively more successful on our opposite
task.
1236 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 58 • 1233–1244 • August 2015
In addition, if one of the mechanisms by which chil-
dren learn the concept of opposite is through the word pairs
co-occurring in sentence frames, as suggested by the dis-
course analysis research, then children’s overall communi-
cative ability, use of context, or knowledge of syntax might
be positively correlated with their performance on the op-
posite task. As such, we measured these skills using overall
scores and subscale (Syntax, Context) scores on the Children’s
Communication Checklist–2 (CCC-2; Bishop, 2006).
Last, children’s understanding of the concept of op-
posite may be related to their learning experiences. In par-
ticular, Jones et al. (2012) suggested that children’s access
to books and organized child care could be important learn-
ing opportunities. We tested this by asking parents to report
via a Parent Questionnaire (see full description in the
Method section) whether their children had had such expe-
riences. The questionnaire included questions on child care
experience, access to books and games about opposites,
and experience playing word games about opposites. We
expected that there may be positive associations between
these opportunities and children’s accuracy on the opposite
task.
Method
Participants
Participants were sixty 3-year-olds (M = 39.07 months,
SD = 2.07; 30 girls, 30 boys), eighty-four 4-year-olds
(M = 50.45 months, SD = 1.87; 42 girls, 42 boys), and
sixty 5-year-olds (M = 62.10 months, SD = 2.02; 30 girls,
30 boys) recruited from the University of Calgary ChILD
database. Across ages, 68 children completed each condi-
tion of the opposite task (twenty 3-year-olds, twenty-eight
4-year-olds, and twenty 5-year-olds in each condition, with
equal numbers of boys and girls). An additional eight chil-
dren participated but were excluded due to experimenter
error (n = 3), placing two images in the box on four or more
trials (n = 3), unwillingness to participate (n = 1), or a
parent-reported speech delay (n = 1). All children were
from English-speaking homes, and in all but three homes
English was the children’s first language.
Materials and Procedure
Participants were tested individually in a quiet room
at the University of Calgary. Each child completed the op-
posite task (randomly assigned to one of three conditions)
followed by the Test of Early Language Development–
Third Edition (TELD-3; Hresko, Reid, & Hammill, 1999),
which is a measure of receptive vocabulary, and the Mem-
ory for Objects task (Nilsen & Graham, 2009), which is
a measure of working memory. Parents completed a brief
demographic questionnaire and the CCC-2, U.S. Edition
(Bishop, 2006), while their child participated.
Opposite Task
The visual stimuli for the opposite task were color
images of familiar animals (e.g., cat, dog, dinosaur; see
online supplemental materials, Supplemental Appendix A). Figure 1. Schematic of the testing setup for the opposite task.
The images were presented in sets of three (e.g., dirty pig,
clean pig, small pig), and within a set all images were the
same type of animal. Because preschool-aged children may
use visual similarity (e.g., shape, texture, color) to guide cate-
gorization of objects (Baldwin, 1992; Bonthoux & Kalenine,
2007; Morgan & Greene, 1994), care was taken to mini-
mize the visual similarity (e.g., color, posture, size) of the
images within sets so that no one image looked particularly
similar to the other two (e.g., black cat, white cat, orange cat).
The images depicted eight pairs (16 words) of anto-
nyms (see online supplemental materials, Supplemental
Appendix B). Two of the eight word pairs were used for
training, and the remaining six pairs were used for the test
trials; each word pair was presented once. Given our proce-
dure, we needed to select pairs that could be depicted in an-
imal images (rendering pairs such as hard–soft or alive–dead
less suitable). We selected candidate pairs from previous
discourse and metalinguistic studies on antonymy (Bracken,
1988; Clark, 1972; Heidenheimer, 1975; Jones & Murphy,
2005). The only pair we used that had not been used in a
previous study was awake–asleep, but because the words
awake and asleep are both listed in the MacArthur–Bates
Communicative Development Inventory (Words and
Sentences; Fenson et al., 2007) for 30-month-olds, we felt
reasonably confident that children in the present study
would know the meanings of those words. In addition,
we used the pair fat–thin, but in previous studies this was
thick–thin (Bracken, 1988; Clark, 1972; Heidenheimer, 1975).
We replaced thick with fat because many children in Clark’s
(1972) study made this substitution and because fat was a
more appropriate adjective to use with animal names.
In each set of images presented to the child, two of image placed last (or second) performed at chance. The lo-
the images depicted animals in opposite states and thus cation of the other two images was counterbalanced, such
were used to represent the antonymous adjectives (e.g., that in half of the trials the target was placed on the right
dirty–clean). The third image was used to represent an unre- side of the child. This balancing ensured that children who
lated distractor (e.g., small). The distractors were generated always chose the image on the right (or on the left) per-
from the eight pairs of adjectives. One member of each formed at chance. Following the labeling of the images, the
antonym pair was used once as a distractor, with the limi- experimenter put the middle image (e.g., clean pig) into
tation that the words short and tall were not used as the the box and labeled the image again while doing so. The
distractor for the big–small word pair and vice versa. The shallowness of the box ensured that children could see the
distractor was never part of the word pair used in the set selected image throughout the trial.
of images immediately preceding or following it. For some word pairs the target and distractor images
On each of the eight trials in the opposite task, a child were quite similar. For example, the small pig did not have
was presented with a set of three images (e.g., dirty pig, any dirt on it and could, therefore, also be considered a
clean pig, small pig). On the table was a shallow open box clean pig. If the experimenter placed the image of the dirty
positioned directly in front of the child (see Figure 1). All pig in the box, the child would have had to select between
sessions were recorded as digital video with the camera two images that depicted pigs with no dirt on them (i.e., the
angled to record the child’s eye gaze. clean pig and the small pig). To help mitigate this problem,
The experimenter introduced the task to the child the experimenter always placed the image that was con-
through two training trials. The experimenter placed a set fusable with the distractor image (in this example, the clean
of images (e.g., dirty pig, clean pig, small pig) on the table pig) into the box.
in front of the child and labeled each image while pointing Each child saw two training trials (presented in a
to it. The experimenter always placed the first image directly fixed order), which were followed by one of four possible
in front of the child. The placement of the second and third orders of presentation of the six test trials. In the opposite-
images was counterbalanced, such that on half of the trials label condition, the experimenter then asked the child to
the second image was placed to the left of the first image. place “the opposite one in the box” (e.g., dirty pig). This
This balancing ensured that children who always chose the was the signal to the child that it was his or her turn to

Phillips & Pexman: Children’s Understanding of “Opposite” 1237

place an image into the box. In the another-one-label and
no-label conditions, children were asked to place “another
one in the box.” The no-label condition further differed
from the opposite-label and another-one-label conditions in
that the images were described simply with nouns and with-
out adjectives (e.g., pig, pig, pig). In the two training trials
presented in the opposite-label condition (but not in the
another-one-label or no-label conditions), the child received
feedback about his or her image selection. If the child se-
lected the distractor image, the experimenter presented the
correct image with the image that the experimenter had se-
lected and verbally told the child the correct response. If
the child selected the target image, the experimenter pro-
vided positive feedback. No feedback was provided on the
six test trials. On training trials in the another-one-label
and no-label conditions, the child was provided with posi-
tive feedback if he or she put either image in the box and
was provided with corrective feedback if he or she did not.
Participant responses in the opposite task were coded
as either a correct target selection (image depicting opposite
adjective) or an incorrect distractor selection (image de-
picting unrelated adjective). Measures coded from the video
included response latency, the proportion of first fixations
on the target, and the durations of looks to the target (pro-
portion of looking time relative to total looking time).
The video recording was examined on a frame-by-
frame basis (frame = 33 ms) using Final Cut Pro 5.0.4
(Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA), with audio and video signals
synchronized. Eye gaze measures were coded from when
the experimenter began voicing “Can you put the opposite
[or another one] in the box?” to when the child placed the
image in the box. Eye gaze measures were coded from
the initiation of movement when it preceded the voicing of
the response request because although the children were
instructed to keep their hands in their laps, they were not
instructed regarding where to look. Thus, a child might
look at the images on the table as soon as the experimenter
finished labeling the images. Individual trials were con-
sidered invalid and were excluded from the eye gaze analysis
if the child (a) was not facing in the direction of the camera
(or if their gaze was otherwise obscured), (b) knocked
an image off the table, (c) asked a question of the ex-
perimenter, (d) needed to be encouraged to respond, or
(e) moved from seated after the trial had started. A total of
79 trials (6.45%) were excluded from the eye gaze analyses
for these reasons.
A second coder coded data for 50 of the participants
(25% of the data). Neither coder was fully blind to the ex-
perimental condition to which a child was assigned because
audio information about the condition was linked to audio
information that was essential to the coding process. Inter-
rater reliability was assessed using a two-way mixed-model
absolute agreement single-measures intraclass correlation
coefficient (ICC; Hallgren, 2012; McGraw & Wong, 1996).
The resulting ICC was in the excellent range for all vari-
ables evaluated (Cicchetti, 1994): response latency, ICC =
.981; correct first fixations on the target, ICC = .945; pro-
portion of time looking at the target image, ICC = .996.
1238 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 58 • 1233–1244 • August 2015
TELD-3
The TELD-3 is a standardized test designed to mea-
sure the language skills of children aged 2;0 to 7;11. The ex-
aminer’s manual reports good test reliability (Cronbach’s
coefficient alpha, all rs > .91; Hresko et al., 1999). The
TELD-3 consists of two subtests: Receptive Language and
Expressive Language. Only receptive vocabulary was of in-
terest in the present study, so only the Receptive Language
subtest was administered. This subtest consists of items that
assess semantic, morphological, and syntactic skills. Raw
scores on the Receptive Language subtest were used in the
present analyses. The TELD-3 contains two forms; Form A
was used in the present research.
Memory for Objects
The Memory for Objects task evaluates children’s
working memory capacity (Nilsen & Graham, 2009). In this
task, the child is shown between one and three sets of three
pictures, is asked to name the pictures (from left to right),
and is asked to remember the last picture (item) in each
row. Pictures are viewed such that only one row is visible at
a time, and the final row of pictures is covered before the
child makes a response.
Increasing the number of rows presented within a
trial increases the task difficulty by increasing the number
of items to recall. In the present experiment each child was
presented with two practice trials (1 single-row trial and
1 two-row trial) and up to 18 test trials (4 single-row trials,
10 two-row trials, and 4 three-row trials). Testing continued
until the child failed to recall a single item from four con-
secutive trials. The measure of interest was the number
of items correctly recalled regardless of order (scored out
of 36).
Alternate versions of this test using colored dots
(Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982; Gathercole & Pickering,
2000), numbers (Ruffman, Rustin, Garnham, & Parkin,
2001), and sentences (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980;
Gathercole & Pickering, 2000) have been used with older
children and adults. Using factor analysis, these measures,
as well as classic measures of working memory such as
backward digit span, have been found to load onto a mea-
sure of central executive working memory (Gathercole,
Pickering, Ambridge, & Wearing, 2004).
CCC-2
The CCC-2 is a standardized test designed to dis-
criminate children with communication impairments from
children with typical development and to screen receptive
and expressive language skills. The CCC-2 assesses chil-
dren’s communication behaviors across 10 subscales and is
intended for use with children aged 4;0 to 16;11. It is a
70-item questionnaire that is to be completed by someone
(i.e., parent, teacher, or therapist) who knows the child well.
Scores on the Context and Syntax subscales were of in-
terest in the present study, as was one of the two composite
scores: the general communication composite.
The U.S. version of the CCC-2 was normed on
950 children with typical development with a sample that
was representative of the U.S. population as reported in
the 2002 Current Population Survey (as cited in Bishop,
2006). The examiner’s manual reports good test reliability
(Cronbach’s coefficient alpha, all rs > .75; Bishop, 2006).
Parent Questionnaire
Parents were asked to complete a brief demographic
questionnaire comprising nine questions about the child’s
age, siblings, birth order, languages spoken in the household,
child care experience, and access to games and books about
the concept of opposite. Five of the questions were designed
to help us describe the sample, and four of the questions
were designed to assess characteristics or experiences (i.e.,
type of child care attended, age starting child care, avail-
ability of books or games on opposites, and experience
playing word games about opposites) that might be related
to understanding the concept of opposite.
Results
Opposite Task Accuracy
Children’s proportions of target selections (i.e., num-
ber of times the target image was selected divided by the
number of valid trials; hereafter referred to as accuracy) in
each of the conditions, as a function of age, are presented
in Table 1.
Accuracy was evaluated with a 3 (age: 3, 4, and
5 years) × 3 (condition: opposite-label, another-one-label, and
no-label) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA).
There was a main effect of age, F(2, 195) = 8.87, p < .001,
and a main effect of condition, F(2, 195) = 13.15, p < .001. Of
most importance, there was a marginally significant Age ×
Condition interaction, F(4, 195) = 2.27, p = .063. Follow-up
simple main-effect tests for each condition revealed the
nature of this interaction. In the opposite-label condition,
there was a significant main effect of age, F(2, 68) = 9.88,
p < .001. Five-year-olds were more accurate than 4-year-
olds, t(65) = 2.47, p = .016, and 3-year-olds, t(65) = 4.45,
p < .001. Four-year-olds also were more accurate than
3-year-olds, t(65) = 2.33, p = .023. Fisher’s least significant
difference correction was applied to these t tests and to all
subsequent follow-up t tests unless otherwise noted. There
was no significant main effect of age in the another-one-
label or no-label conditions (all ps > .141).
Children’s accuracy relative to chance performance
(i.e., 50% target image selection, or three trials out of six) in
each condition was evaluated with a two-tailed, single-sample
Table 1. Children’s mean proportions of correct target item selections
in each condition.
Opposite-label Another-one-label No-label
Age
(years) M SD M SD M SD
3 0.50 0.16 0.44 0.15 0.46 0.13
4 0.64 0.22 0.54 0.19 0.48 0.21
5 0.79 0.23 0.55 0.22 0.51 0.20
Phillips & Pexman: Children’s Understanding of “Opposite”
t test for each of the conditions. Accuracy in the opposite-
label condition was significantly above chance, t(67) = 5.02,
p < .001. This effect was driven by both 5- and 4-year-olds
performing above chance: t(19) = 5.71, p < .001, and
t(27) = 3.31, p = .003, respectively. Three-year-olds performed
at chance, t(19) = 0.00, p = 1.00. These tests remain sig-
nificant even after applying a Bonferroni correction. In
contrast, children’s accuracy was not significantly above
chance in the another-one-label or no-label conditions (all
ps > .452).
To evaluate whether children learned about the con-
cept of opposite in the study (across the six study trials),
children’s accuracy in the first set of three trials (Block 1;
M = 0.52, SD = 0.31) was compared with their accuracy in
the second set of three trials (Block 2; M = 0.57, SD = 0.30)
with a 2 (block: 1, 2) × 3 (age: 3, 4, and 5 years old) × 3
(condition: opposite-label, another-one-label, and no-label)
mixed design ANOVA. Accuracy on the two blocks of trials
was not significantly different, F(1, 195) = 2.39, p = .124.
Furthermore, accuracy as a function of block did not inter-
act with either condition or age (all ps > .903). Together,
this suggests that children’s accuracy did not improve over
the course of the opposite task, suggesting that children
did not learn about the concept of opposite from the oppo-
site task itself.
Correlations and Demographics
Children’s scores on the measures of working mem-
ory, receptive vocabulary (TELD-3 raw score), and com-
munication skills (CCC-2 scales) are presented in Table 2,
Table 3, and Table 4. We evaluated relationships between
children’s performance in the opposite-label condition of
the opposite task and these measures with partial correlations,
correcting for children’s age—that is, we tested five corre-
lations, none of which were significant after Bonferroni cor-
rection was applied.
We next examined relationships between children’s ac-
curacy (i.e., proportion of correct responses) in the opposite-
label condition, and responses to four of the questions
on the demographic questionnaire were evaluated with
chi-square analyses and Pearson correlations. The one sig-
nificant association that survived Bonferroni correction was
between children performing above chance (four or more
trials out of six) on the opposite task and parents reporting
having books or games in the home that focus on opposites,
c2(1) = 6.12, p < .05. That is, children whose parents re-
ported that they had books or games focused on opposites
were more likely to perform above chance than those who
did not have access to these materials in the home. It is
important to note, however, that there was a trend for chil-
dren with access to books or games on opposites (M = 51.66,
SD = 9.29) to be older than those without access (M = 46.09,
SD = 7.96). To control for this variability, we conducted
a hierarchical logistic regression in which the criterion vari-
able was whether children performed above chance on the
opposite task. As predictors, we entered child’s age on the
first step and access to books or games on the second step.
1239
Table 2. Children’s mean raw scores on additional measures and demographic characteristics in the opposite-label condition.

Age (years)
3 4 5 Overall
Variable M SD M SD M SD M SD

Object memory 6.00 5.71 14.35 5.00 21.79 3.57 15.23 7.33
TELD-3 22.70 4.41 27.78 4.41 30.80 3.62 27.16 5.22
CCC-2 GCC — — 78.70 15.85 80.26 11.70 79.35 14.16
CCC-2 Syntax — — 3.41 3.84 2.21 2.84 2.91 3.48
CCC-2 Context — — 6.59 3.38 5.79 2.37 6.26 3.00
Age started preschool or day care (years) 1.25 0.62 2.65 0.81 2.65 0.86 2.21 1.00
Children in family (N) 2.05 0.52 2.15 0.78 2.45 0.83 2.22 0.74
In child care (%) 75 54 55 60
Have access to books or games about 70 82 95 82
opposites (%)
Have experience playing word games 33 52 70 47
with opposites (%)

Note. The Children’s Communication Checklist–2 (CCC-2) is not intended for use with children under the age of 4 years. Em dashes indicate
data not obtained. TELD-3 = Test of Early Language Development–Third Edition; GCC = general communication composite.

With the child’s age statistically controlled in this way, the
relationship between access to games or books and chil-
dren’s accuracy on the opposite task was marginal (p = .068)
and thus should not be overinterpreted.
Opposite Task Response Latency and Eye Gaze
Eye gaze and latency measures were included to eval-
uate whether children showed evidence of an implicit un-
derstanding of opposite before they are able to perform
above chance. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that
young children struggle with the metalinguistic task de-
mands of selecting the opposite one (e.g., Jones et al., 2012)
and that this might be evident in their eye gaze and re-
sponse latencies. In short, younger children may be slower
to respond and may have more total looks at the target
image than older children despite being just as likely as older
children to look first to the target image.
Response Latencies
Children’s response latencies were evaluated with a 3
(age: 3, 4, and 5 years old) × 3 (condition: opposite-label,
another-one-label, and no-label) between-subjects ANOVA.
Mean response latencies (in ms) are presented in Table 5.
There was only a significant effect of condition, F(2, 130) =
5.28, p = .006. Children in the opposite-label condition
had longer average response latencies than children in the
another-one-label condition, t(130) = 2.36, p = .020, and
children in the no-label condition, t(130) = 3.33, p = .001.
The response latencies of children in the another-one-label
condition did not differ from those of the children in the
no-label condition, t(130) = 1.14, p = .258. This suggests

Table 3. Children’s mean raw scores on additional measures and demographic characteristics in the another-one-label condition.

Age (years)
3 4 5 Overall
Variable M SD M SD M SD M SD

Object memory 14.80 4.02 15.52 5.12 21.16 2.54 17.30 5.00
TELD-3 22.90 4.76 28.96 2.76 28.95 2.87 27.18 4.42
CCC-2 GCC — — 80.22 15.71 79.00 15.44 79.70 15.44
CCC-2 Syntax — — 2.85 2.33 3.40 3.78 3.09 3.00
CCC-2 Context — — 6.89 2.90 5.20 2.95 6.17 3.01
Age started preschool or day care (years) 1.64 0.74 2.68 0.72 2.47 0.87 2.34 0.88
Children in family (N) 1.50 0.63 2.04 0.74 2.45 0.76 2.03 0.80
In child care (%) 55 57 60 57
Have access to books or games about 70 82 95 82
opposites (%)
Have experience playing word games 60 79 75 73
with opposites (%)

Note. The Children’s Communication Checklist–2 (CCC-2) is not intended for use with children under the age of 4 years. Em dashes indicate
data not obtained. TELD-3 = Test of Early Language Development–Third Edition; GCC = general communication composite.

1240 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 58 • 1233–1244 • August 2015
Table 4. Children’s mean raw scores on additional measures and demographic characteristics in the no-label condition.

Age (years)
3 4 5 Overall
Variable M SD M SD M SD M SD

Object memory 15.22 3.56 18.54 3.40 20.95 4.27 18.87 4.19
TELD-3 23.15 4.58 28.04 3.74 31.25 2.29 27.54 4.80
CCC-2 GCC — — 70.96 13.77 85.53 13.39 76.98 15.29
CCC-2 Syntax — — 4.85 3.44 1.84 2.54 3.61 3.42
CCC-2 Context — — 8.78 4.37 5.16 2.29 7.28 4.04
Age started preschool or day care (years) 1.27 0.70 2.34 0.90 2.76 1.09 2.24 1.06
Children in family (N) 2.11 0.81 1.81 0.74 2.35 0.88 2.06 0.82
In child care (%) 45 54 50 50
Have access to books or games about 95 82 90 88
opposites (%)
Have experience playing word games 56 52 75 60
with opposites (%)

Note. The Children’s Communication Checklist–2 (CCC-2) is not intended for use with children under the age of 4 years. Em dashes indicate
data not obtained. TELD-3 = Test of Early Language Development–Third Edition; GCC = general communication composite.

that children were engaged in a different manner of process-
ing in the opposite condition (vs. the other conditions, in
which the word opposite was not used). As such, this result
provides evidence that children carried out additional pro-
cessing in the opposite condition; presumably, that process-
ing is what is required to evaluate the opposite relationship.
All other effects were not significant (ps > .598). The null
effects of age in this analysis do not support the prediction
that younger children would be slower to respond than
older children due to sensitivity to the antonym relation but
challenges with the metalinguistic task demands.
Eye Gaze Fixations
Children’s mean proportions of first looks to the cor-
rect image (target) were evaluated with a 3 (age: 3, 4, and
5 years old) × 3 (condition: opposite-label, another-one-label,
and no-label) between-subjects ANOVA. Mean proportions
of first looks to the correct image are presented in Table 5.
There was a significant effect of age, F(2, 191) = 5.26,
p = .006; a significant effect of condition, F(2, 191) = 6.60,
p = .002; and a significant interaction between age and
condition, F(4, 191) = 3.32, p = .012. Follow-up simple
main-effect tests for each condition revealed the nature of
this interaction. In the opposite-label condition there was
a significant main effect of age, F(2, 62) = 9.95, p < .001.
Five-year-olds made more correct first looks than 4-year-olds,
t(62) = 3.21, p = .002, and 3-year-olds, t(62) = 4.32, p < .001.
Four-year-olds did not differ from 3-year-olds, t(62) =
1.50, p = .139. As such, these results provide little evidence
that younger children are drawn to the correct image in the
opposite-label condition. There were no significant effects
of age in the other two conditions (ps > .796).
Eye Gaze Total Looks
Eye gaze was also examined in terms of duration of
time spent looking at the target as a proportion of the total

Table 5. Children’s mean response latencies, mean proportions of first looks, and mean proportions of time spent looking at the target image
for each condition.

Opposite-label Another-one-label No-label Overall

Variable M SD M SD M SD M SD

Mean response latencies (ms)

3-year-olds 4069.39 605.63 3940.72 1081.24 3602.33 1053.79 3875.50 947.21
4-year-olds 4496.99 1341.21 3894.29 1342.05 3464.24 1255.82 3893.11 1352.79
5-year-olds 4553.45 1285.14 3390.35 1281.97 3443.33 1053.15 3688.37 1280.52
Overall 4362.25 1120.66 3768.06 1252.56 3497.99 1139.98 3839.18 1220.42
Mean proportions of first looks to the target image
3-year-olds .50 .23 .53 .21 .52 .17 .52 .20
4-year-olds .60 .25 .50 .25 .50 .21 .53 .24
5-year-olds .81 .17 .55 .16 .53 .18 .63 .21
Overall .64 .25 .52 .21 .52 .19 .56 .22
Mean proportions of time spent looking at the target image
3-year-olds .33 .14 .33 .11 .30 .09 .32 .11
4-year-olds .33 .13 .32 .11 .30 .11 .32 .12
5-year-olds .36 .15 .34 .12 .31 .09 .34 .12
Overall .34 .14 .33 .11 .30 .10 .33 .12

Phillips & Pexman: Children’s Understanding of “Opposite” 1241

looking time. A higher proportion reflects more time spent
looking at the target and less time looking at other loca-
tions. Mean proportion of time spent looking at the target
image is presented in Table 5. Children’s proportions of
time spent looking at the target were evaluated with a 3
(age: 3, 4, and 5 years old) × 3 (condition: opposite-label,
another-one-label, and no-label) between-subjects ANOVA.
There were no significant effects (all ps > .201). As such,
there was no support for the prediction that younger children
would have more total looks at the target than older children
and thus little evidence that younger children are sensitive
to the antonym relation but struggle with the conceptual
demands of the metalinguistic task.
Discussion
The primary goal of the present study was to deter-
mine the age at which children develop an understanding
for the concept of opposite with a task that is not overly
demanding. Secondary goals were to evaluate whether
there was evidence of early sensitivity to the concept of
opposite and whether other cognitive developments or
learning experiences are related to the development of
this concept.
Development of Opposite Understanding
The main predictions—that 4- and 5-year-olds would
demonstrate an understanding of opposite in the opposite-
label condition of the opposite task and that accuracy on
the task would improve with age—were supported. Four-
and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, performed above chance.
Furthermore, 5-year-olds were more accurate than 4-year-
olds, who in turn were more accurate than 3-year-olds.
Although the task difficulty was minimized by eliminating
the need for a verbal response and by encouraging chil-
dren’s engagement with the task through the use of pictures
of animals, the youngest children still did not demonstrate
a metalinguistic understanding of opposite. This is consis-
tent with the conclusions made in previous metalinguistic
studies that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand
the concept of opposite (Clark, 1972; Morris, 2003). Like
these studies, we here found that the age of acquisition
was considerably earlier than that suggested by the results
of the initial metalinguistic study conducted by Kreezer and
Dallenbach (1929). We also found that children’s accuracy
improved between the ages of 4 and 5 years, which is con-
sistent with Clark (1972) and with the general pattern of
acquisition found by Kreezer and Dallenbach but is incon-
sistent with the findings of Morris (2003).
The design of our task enabled us to evaluate oppo-
site understanding in children younger than 4 years, which
addressed one of the major limitations of previous meta-
linguistic studies. Previous studies had concluded that chil-
dren as young as 4 years had at least a nascent understanding
of opposite but had not evaluated younger children and thus
were unable to conclude whether younger children might
also understand the concept. The design of our task allowed
1242 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 58 • 1233–1244 • August 2015
for the participation of even the youngest children we tested
and therefore allowed us to establish with more confidence
a baseline age at which most children did not understand
the concept of opposite.
We also included the another-one-label and no-label
conditions to help rule out alternative explanations for chil-
dren’s performance in the opposite-label condition. Results
showed that children of all ages performed at chance in
both of these control conditions. As such, we inferred that
provision of the images and adjectives was not sufficient
to prompt nonrandom performance in the opposite task.
There was nothing in the stimulus materials themselves that
made the opposite relationship salient. Children needed to
be explicitly asked for the “opposite one” in order to select
the image depicting the antonym. Furthermore, longer re-
sponse latencies for all children in the opposite-label con-
dition suggested that this condition required processing
beyond that required for the other two conditions. We pre-
sume that this additional processing involves consideration
of the opposite relationship.
A related goal of the current study was to explore
whether there were other cognitive achievements and learn-
ing experiences related to knowledge of opposite. It was
predicted that children’s accuracy on the opposite task
would be positively correlated with their working memory,
receptive vocabulary, and communicative skills. None of
these hypotheses were supported, perhaps due to the re-
stricted range of scores observed in the sample, particularly
with the receptive vocabulary task. It may also be the case
that our use of picture stimuli attenuated the working
memory demands of the task and thus eliminated any rela-
tionship that might exist between working memory and
knowledge of opposite. It is also possible that other measures
that were not included in the present study might be more
strongly related to children’s knowledge of opposite. For in-
stance, cognitive flexibility and other executive functions
besides working memory could support children’s ability to
reason about word meaning and show success in the op-
posite task. Those relationships could be assessed in future
research.
Demographic data provided by parents revealed that
children who had access to books or games about opposites
in the home tended to have above-chance performance in
the opposite-label condition of the opposite task, but this
relationship was only marginally significant once child’s
age was controlled. Thus, there was little support in our
findings for the hypothesis that children’s learning experi-
ences might be related to their understanding of opposite.
This relationship could be explored more systematically
in future research via a training or longitudinal study involv-
ing shared book reading.
Implicit Awareness
Several measures of implicit awareness, specifically
the eye gaze measures, were included in order to evaluate
whether children would show sensitivity to the concept of
opposite. We found no evidence of early sensitivity in any
of the eye gaze measures: The older children were more
likely to look first at the correct image, and the youngest
children in our sample did not take longer to respond or
look more often at the correct target image. Thus, it ap-
pears that only the older children demonstrated under-
standing of opposite, through overt means (correct target
selections) and in processing (more correct first looks to tar-
gets). In speculating about why we did not find evidence
of implicit appreciation in young children’s processing, at
least two explanations seem possible. One interpretation is
that understanding of opposite, unlike other cognitive skills,
does not develop implicitly first. Of course, it is also possi-
ble that implicit awareness is present in younger children
but that our measures were simply not sensitive enough to
detect this awareness. We would lean toward the first inter-
pretation because the eye gaze measures did show sensi-
tivity to some differences in processing, but we cannot rule
out the second explanation.
A limitation of the current design of the opposite task
is that, in principle, a child could perform above chance
simply by understanding that there is some kind of associa-
tion between the words that form the antonym pair without
necessarily understanding that the association is one of
opposite. This is possible because the distractor is unrelated
to the word pair. Although children could be simply notic-
ing an association between the word pairs, evidence from
the another-one-label condition in the present study suggests
that this is not likely the case. When children were presented
with the adjectival labels but not the concept name (oppo-
site), they did not perform above chance; the adjectival labels
themselves were not sufficient for above-chance perfor-
mance. If the children in the opposite-label condition were
simply noticing the relationship between the words in an
antonym pair, the children in the another-one-label con-
dition should have also performed above chance. That they
did not suggests that children in the opposite-label condi-
tion were paying attention to the specific antonymic relation-
ship mentioned in the instructions.
A further limitation of the current study was that
there could have been variability in the pictures we chose in
terms of their ability to convey the meaning of each label.
That is, the picture of the old rabbit may have been a less
fitting illustration of that label than the dirty pig was of its
label. We are reassured somewhat by the fact that we pre-
sented children with multiple trials and by the fact that,
across children, items were used as both targets and distrac-
ters. Nonetheless, our findings may be influenced to some
degree by our choice of stimuli.
Conclusions
The results of the present study provide several novel
contributions. To evaluate children’s understanding of op-
posite, we developed a task that allowed collection of both
implicit and explicit behavioral responses. In addition, to
our knowledge this study is the first metalinguistic study
that includes 3-year-olds. Therefore, the assumption made
by previous researchers about the lack of understanding in
Phillips & Pexman: Children’s Understanding of “Opposite”
3-year-olds is now supported by empirical test. The results
allow us to conclude that the majority of children under the
age of 4 years do not yet have a metalinguistic concept of
opposite or demonstrate sensitivity to the concept in their
processing. The results do not provide clear evidence that
children’s cognitive skills or experiences are related to their
understanding of opposite. As such, there is more to be
done in future research to identify the key factors that
help children learn the concept of opposite and to suggest
intervention strategies for children who struggle with the
concept.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council postgraduate doctoral scholarship
to Catherine I. Phillips and a Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council Discovery Grant (435-2013-0096) to Penny M.
Pexman.
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