Hostname: page-component-76c49bb84f-l6pkv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-04T07:48:30.249Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Developmental differences in the effects of phonological, lexical and semantic variables on word learning by infants*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2008

HOLLY L. STORKEL
HOLLY L. STORKEL*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
Address for correspondence: Holly Storkel, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders, University of Kansas, 3001 Dole Human Development Center, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045-7555. e-mail: hstorkel@ku.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The influence of phonological (i.e. individual sounds), lexical (i.e. whole-word forms) and semantic (i.e. meaning) characteristics on the words known by infants age 1 ; 4 to 2 ; 6 was examined, using an existing database (Dale & Fenson, 1996). For each noun, word frequency, two phonological (i.e. positional segment average, biphone average), two lexical (i.e. neighborhood density, word length) and four semantic variables (i.e. semantic set size, connectivity, probability resonance, resonance strength) were computed. Regression analyses showed that more infants knew (1) words composed of low-probability sounds and sound pairs, (2) shorter words with high neighborhood density, and (3) words that were semantically related to other words, both in terms of the number and strength of semantic connections. Moreover, the effect of phonological variables was constant across age, whereas the effect of lexical and semantic variables changed across age.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 291 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

[*]

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (DC08095; DC04781; DC005803; HD002528). David Slegers and Todd Little aided in the statistical analysis. Michael Vitevitch provided comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

References

REFERENCES

Bailey, T. M. & Plunkett, K. (2002). Phonological specificity in early words. Cognitive Development 17, 1265–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, L., Westbury, C. & Burgess, C. (2001). Characterizing semantic space: Neighborhood effects in word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 8, 531–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charles-Luce, J. & Luce, P. A. (1990). Similarity neighbourhoods of words in young children's lexicons. Journal of Child Language 17, 205–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coady, J. A. & Aslin, R. N. (2003). Phonological neighbourhoods in the developing lexicon. Journal of Child Language 30(2), 441–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences, 2nd ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Dale, P. S. & Fenson, L. (1996). Lexical development norms for young children. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 28, 125–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entwisle, D. R. (1966). Word associations of young children. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J. P., Pethick, S. & Reilly, J. S. (1993). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: User's guide and technical manual. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Gershkoff-Stowe, L. (2002). Object naming, vocabulary growth, and development of word retrieval abilities. Journal of Memory and Language 46, 665–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gershkoff-Stowe, L. & Smith, L. B. (2004). Shape and the first hundred nouns. Child Development 75(4), 1098–1114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gierut, J. A. & Dale, R. A. (2007). Comparability of lexical corpora: Word frequency in phonological generalization. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 21(6), 423–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gupta, P. & MacWhinney, B. (1997). Vocabulary acquisition and verbal short-term memory: Computational and neural bases. Brain and Language 59, 267–333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hollich, G., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Brand, R. J., Brown, E., Chung, H. L., Hennon, E. & Rocroi, C. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 65, v–123.Google ScholarPubMed
Hollich, G., Jusczyk, P. W. & Luce, P. A. (2002). Lexical neighborhood effects in 17-month-old word learning. In Skarabela, B., Fish, S. & Do, A. H.-J. (eds), Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vol. 1, 314–23. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Goodman, M. B. & Baumann, A. (1999). Nine-month-olds' attention to sound similarities in syllables. Journal of Memory and Language 40, 62–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Luce, P. A. & Charles-Luce, J. (1994). Infants' sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. Journal of Memory and Language 33, 630–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kucera, H. & Francis, W. N. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University.Google Scholar
Landauer, T. K. & Streeter, L. A. (1973). Structural differences between common and rare words: Failure of equivalence assumptions for theories of word recognition. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 12, 119–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, L. B., Schwartz, R. G., Chapman, K., Rowan, L. E., Prelock, P. A., Terrell, B., Weiss, A. L. & Messick, C. (1982). Early lexical acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 25, 554–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luce, P. A. & Pisoni, D. B. (1998). Recognizing spoken words: The neighborhood activation model. Ear & Hearing 19, 1–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Macken, M. A. (1980). The child's lexical representation: The ‘puzzle-puddle-pickle’ evidence. Journal of Linguistics 16, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. & Schreiber, T. (1998). The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and word fragment norms. Retrieved from: www.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/.Google Scholar
Nelson, D. L., McKinney, V., Gee, N. & Janczura, G. (1998). Interpreting the influence of implicitly activated memories on recall and recognition. Psychological Review 105, 299–324.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, D. L. & Zhang, N. (2000). The ties that bind what is known to the recall of what is new. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 7, 604–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, D. L., Zhang, N. & McKinney, V. (2001). The ties that bind what is known to the recognition of what is new. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 27, 1147–59.Google Scholar
Newman, R. S. & German, D. J. (2005). Life span effects on lexical factors in oral naming. Language and Speech 48(2), 123–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pisoni, D. B., Nusbaum, H. C., Luce, P. A. & Slowiaczek, L. M. (1985). Speech perception, word recognition and the structure of the lexicon. Speech Communication 4, 75–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, M. L., Oetting, J. B., Marquis, J., Bode, J. & Pae, S. (1994). Frequency of input effects on word comprehension of children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37, 106–122.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schwartz, R. G. & Leonard, L. B. (1982). Do children pick and choose? An examination of phonological selection and avoidance in early lexical acquisition. Journal of Child Language 9, 319–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, L. B. (2000). Learning how to learn words: An associative crane. In Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Akhtar, N., Bloom, L., Hollich, G., Plunkett, K., Smith, L., Tomasello, M. & Woodward, A. (eds), Becoming a word learner: A debate on lexical acquisition, 51–80. London: Oxford Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, N. V. (1973). The acquisition of phonology: A case study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Soja, N. N., Carey, S. & Spelke, E. S. (1991). Ontological categories guide young children's inductions of word meaning: Object terms and substance terms. Cognition 38, 179–211.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. (2001). Learning new words: Phonotactic probability in language development. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 44, 1321–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. (2004a). The emerging lexicon of children with phonological delays: Phonotactic constraints and probability in acquisition. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(5), 1194–212.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. (2004b). Methods for minimizing the confounding effects of word length in the analysis of phonotactic probability and neighborhood density. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 47(6), 1454–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L., Armbruster, J. & Hogan, T. P. (2006). Differentiating phonotactic probability and neighborhood density in adult word learning. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(6), 1175–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. & Rogers, M. A. (2000). The effect of probabilistic phonotactics on lexical acquisition. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 14, 407–425.Google Scholar
Swingley, D. & Aslin, R. N. (2002). Lexical neighborhoods and the word-form representations of 14-month-olds. Psychological Science 13, 480–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S. & Luce, P. A. (1999). Probabilistic phonotactics and neighborhood activation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory of Language 40, 374–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S., Luce, P. A., Charles-Luce, J. & Kemmerer, D. (1997). Phonotactics and syllable stress: Implications for the processing of spoken nonsense words. Language and Speech 40, 47–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S., Luce, P. A., Pisoni, D. B. & Auer, E. T. (1999). Phonotactics, neighborhood activation, and lexical access for spoken words. Brain and Language 68, 306–311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary (1967). Los Angeles: Library Reproduction Service.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., Fennell, C. T., Corcoran, K. M. & Stager, C. L. (2002). Infants' ability to learn phonetically similar words: Effects of age and vocabulary size. Infancy 3, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuan, Y. C. (2002). Multiple imputation for missing data: Concepts and new development. Rockville: SAS Institute Inc.Google Scholar