Effects of Vocabulary Size on Online Lexical Processing by Preschoolers

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary size and the speed and accuracy of lexical processing in preschoolers between the ages of 30-46 months using an automatic eye tracking task based on the looking-while-listening paradigm (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008) and mispronunciation paradigm (White & Morgan, 2008). Children's eye gaze patterns were tracked while they looked at two pictures (one familiar object, one unfamiliar object) on a computer screen and simultaneously heard one of three kinds of auditory stimuli: correct pronunciations of the familiar object's name, one-feature mispronunciations of the familiar object's name, or a nonword. The results showed that children with larger expressive vocabularies, relative to children with smaller expressive vocabularies, were more likely to look to a familiar object upon hearing a correct pronunciation and to an unfamiliar object upon hearing a novel word. Results also showed that children with larger expressive vocabularies were more sensitive to mispronunciations; they were more likely to look toward the unfamiliar object rather than the familiar object upon hearing a one-feature mispronunciation of a familiar object-name. These results suggest that children with smaller vocabularies, relative to their larger-vocabulary age peers, are at a disadvantage for learning new words, as well as for processing familiar words.

Two-year-olds interpret novel phonological neighbors as familiar words.

“…Children with larger vocabularies were somewhat more likely than children with smaller vocabularies to treat novel words as referring to novel objects, a finding similar to that of Law and Edwards (2015). The vocabulary effect on novel-object looking was as strong for nonce trials ( r = .29) as for MP trials ( r = .27), which might suggest that the vocabulary effect reflects a difference in ability or disposition to treat new words as words, and not primarily an effect of fine phonological interpretation per se .…”

“…On the other hand, this disposition might itself come about more readily in children whose phonological interpretation skills are most secure because their categories are more robust or because they have a stronger insight into their function. There is now a substantial body of empirical work supporting links between vocabulary size and several lexical skills like word recognition and phonological processing in very young children (e.g., Law & Edwards, 2015; Marchman & Fernald, 2008, though vocabulary size is not always found to be linked to phonological sensitivity in word recognition (e.g., Swingley & Aslin, 2000). The causal pathways that yield these correlations, when found, are unclear at present.…”

Familiar Object Salience Affects Novel Word Learning

“…Although there have been robust results linking vocabulary size to familiar word comprehension (e.g., Fernald, Perfors, & Marchman, ), there have been inconsistent and mixed results linking vocabulary size to referent selection and word learning. While there is substantial methodological variability between studies, we notice one general pattern: experiments that have found a significant association between vocabulary size and referent selection or word learning used measures of children's expressive vocabulary (Bion et al., ; Law & Edwards, ). Many of the experiments that have failed to find a relation—the present experiment included—used measures of children's receptive vocabulary (Hollich et al., ; Mather & Plunkett, , , ; cf.…”

Lexical‐processing efficiency leverages novel word learning in infants and toddlers

“…A notable exception is a study by Law and Edwards (2014), which revealed that preschoolers with larger vocabularies tend to look at an unfamiliar picture more quickly when hearing an unfamiliar word. This possibility is particularly difficult to rule out because most work in this area has used parent report measures of vocabulary size rather than assessing wordlearning ability directly.…”