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Symmetries and asymmetries in early lexical comprehension and production*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Margaret Harris ,
Caroline Yeeles ,
Joan Chasin  and
Yvonne Oakley
Margaret Harris*
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Caroline Yeeles
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Joan Chasin
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Yvonne Oakley
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
*
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.
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Abstract

Six children were visited in their homes every two weeks for 18 months from the age of six months in order to observe their developing comprehension and production of words. Controlled testing of the children's developing vocabulary was also carried out to provide a more detailed picture of the precise context in which a word was understood or produced. The results showed both similarities and individual differences among the children in patterns of early comprehension. For all six children there was a very close relationship between early production and comprehension of words: words that were contextually flexible in production tended also to be so in comprehension and words that were context-bound also tended to be so in both modalities although there was some evidence that the two types of word differed in the extent to which comprehension preceded production. All children were also similar in showing evidence of contextually flexible comprehension very early on. However, there were individual differences both in the rate at which comprehension developed and in the lag between comprehension and production. The significance of this pattern of development for accounts of lexical development is explored.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , February 1995 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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Footnotes

[*]

This paper was written while the first author was on a Social Science Research Fellowship from the Nuffield foundation. The research was supported by grant number R000 23 2037 from the Economic and Social Research Council to the first author.

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