A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness.

Abstract

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 54(7) of (see record 2018-30226-001). In the article, the reference for Legacy, Zesiger, Friend,& Poulin-Dubois (2016) should be Legacy, Zesiger, Friend, & Poulin-Dubois (2018). The correct reference for the article is listed below: Legacy, J., Zesiger, P., Friend, M., & Poulin-Dubois, D. (2018). Vocabulary size and speed of word recognition in very young French-English bilinguals: A longitudinal study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21, 137-149. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000833. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Recent studies demonstrate that emerging literacy depends on earlier language achievement. Importantly, most extant work focuses on parent-reported production prior to 30 months of age. Of interest is whether and how directly assessed vocabulary comprehension in the 2nd year of life supports vocabulary and kindergarten readiness in the 4th year. We first contrasted orthogonal indices of parent-reported production and directly assessed vocabulary comprehension and found that comprehension was a stronger predictor of child outcomes. We then assessed prediction from vocabulary comprehension controlling for maternal education, preschool attendance, and child sex. In 3 studies early, decontextualized vocabulary comprehension emerged as a significant predictor of 4th year language and kindergarten readiness accounting for unique variance above demographic control variables. Further we found that the effect of early vocabulary on 4th year kindergarten readiness was not mediated by 4th year vocabulary. This pattern of results emerged in English monolingual children (N = 48) and replicated in French monolingual (N = 58) and French-English bilingual children (N = 34). Our findings suggest that early, decontextualized vocabulary may provide a platform for the establishment of a conceptual system that supports both later vocabulary and kindergarten readiness, including the acquisition of a wide range of concepts including print and number. Differences between parent-reported and directly assessed vocabulary and the mechanisms by which decontextualized vocabulary may contribute to conceptual development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Assessing a continuum of lexical–semantic knowledge in the second year of life: A multimodal approach

“…Correct responses in picture pointing tasks have been shown to predict subsequent language outcomes and readiness for school (Friend, (in review), Smolak, Liu, Poulin-Dubois, & Zesiger, 2016). Therefore, children’s most robust word knowledge may be a stronger predictor of developmental outcomes than is partial knowledge.…”

Language status at age 3: Group and individual prediction from vocabulary comprehension in the second year.

“…The French CCT has moderate test- retest reliability and convergent validity with the IFDC (Friend & Zesiger, 2011). Internal consistency is strong across forms (Cronbach’s α = .92 and .91, respectively; Friend, et al, 2018).…”

“…Decontextualized, in contrast to context-bound, associations may provide the substrate for subsequent word knowledge and conceptual development (Schmitt, 2014) and predict downstream language and cognitive ability. Friend, et al (2018) found that decontextualized vocabulary in the second year predicted vocabulary comprehension and kindergarten readiness at age four in monolingual English and French-speaking children and in bilingual children acquiring French and English simultaneously. Decontextualized vocabulary was a stronger predictor than parent report with effect sizes comparable to or greater than those in prior studies.…”

Longitudinal Effects of Mediums of Word Explanation on L2 Vocabulary Learning Strategies Among Chinese Grade-7 Students

“…Past studies show that reading texts through word incidental learning determined the ways in which readers interpret the meaning and the key term or words explanation, which supports the main idea that sentences increase the global inference (Pam and Karimi, 2016;Lee, 2017). Oxford (2002) and Friend et al (2018) reported that compound words or phrases contributed to memorization strategy development through semantic association. However, past studies investigated the effect of word incidental learning on students' VLS development under the level of compound words or phrases, and a few studies examined the word incidental learning effect on VLS development through a sentence-level explanation.…”