Rapid Word Learning by Fifteen‐Month‐Olds under Tightly Controlled Conditions

Schafer, Graham; Plunkett, Kim

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06190.x

Cited by 215 publications

(257 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The increased N200-500 cannot be due to differences in phonological familiarity because the novel-paired and novel-not-paired words were each heard the same number of times. Behavioral studies have shown that infants in this age range engage in fast mapping of word object pairings in as few as nine pairings (Woodward, Markman, & Fitzsimmons, 1994;Schafer & Plunkett, 1998). We cannot say definitively that the infants learned both new words.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Watching the infant brain learn words: effects of vocabulary size and experience

Mills

Plunkett

Prat

et al. 2005

Cognitive Development

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123

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Previous investigations comparing auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to words whose meanings infants did or did not comprehend, found bilateral differences in brain activity to known versus unknown words in 13-month-old infants, in contrast with unilateral, left hemisphere, differences in activity in 20-month-old infants. We explore two alternative explanations for these findings. Changes in hemispheric specialization may result from a qualitative shift in the way infants process known words between 13 and 20 months. Alternatively, hemispheric specialization may arise from increased familiarity with the individual words tested. We contrasted these two explanations by measuring ERPs from 20-month-old infants with high and low production scores, for novel words they had just learned. A bilateral distribution of ERP differences was observed in both groups of infants, though the difference was larger in the left hemisphere for the high producers. These findings suggest that word familiarity is an important factor in determining the distribution of brain regions involved in word learning. An emerging left hemispheric specialization may reflect increased efficiency in the manner in which infants process familiar and novel words.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Watching the infant brain learn words: effects of vocabulary size and experience

Mills

Plunkett

Prat

et al. 2005

Cognitive Development

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123

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“…If, however, children affixed the name to the part, they should either look equally to both objects (because both contained the part) or look significantly more at the part by itself. The tendency to look longer at a labeled object has been well established (Hollich et al, 1998;Schafer & Plunkett, 1998).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young children associate novel words with complex objects rather than salient parts.

Hollich¹,

Golinkoff²,

Hirsh‐Pasek³

2007

Developmental Psychology

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How do children learn associations between novel words and complex perceptual displays? Using a visual preference procedure, the authors tested 12-and 19-month-olds to see whether the infants would associate a novel word with a complex 2-part object or with either of that object's parts, both of which were potentially objects in their own right and 1 of which was highly salient to infants. At both ages, children's visual fixation times during test were greater to the entire complex object than to the salient part (Experiment 1) or to the less salient part (Experiment 2)-when the original label was requested. Looking times to the objects were equal if a new label was requested or if neutral audio was used during training (Experiment 3). Thus, from 12 months of age, infants associate words with whole objects, even those that could potentially be construed as 2 separate objects and even if 1 of the parts is salient.

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“…Because comprehension occurs automatically without time for reflection, it is important to examine listeners' interpretation during speech processing and not just afterward. When the preferential-looking methods used widely in infancy research were extended to studies of language comprehension, researchers began to use summary measures of looking time to assess infants' lexical knowledge (e.g., Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987;Schafer & Plunkett, 1998). However, because processing efficiency was not their focus, studies using these techniques did not capture time-course information about speed of response as was standard in the adult literature.…”

Section: Efficiency In Speech Processing By Infantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Picking up speed in understanding: Speech processing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the 2nd year.

Fernald

Perfors

Marchman

2006

Developmental Psychology

556

572

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To explore how online speech processing efficiency relates to vocabulary growth in the 2nd year, the authors longitudinally observed 59 English-learning children at 15, 18, 21, and 25 months as they looked at pictures while listening to speech naming one of the pictures. The time course of eye movements in response to speech revealed significant increases in the efficiency of comprehension over this period. Further, speed and accuracy in spoken word recognition at 25 months were correlated with measures of lexical and grammatical development from 12 to 25 months. Analyses of growth curves showed that children who were faster and more accurate in online comprehension at 25 months were those who showed faster and more accelerated growth in expressive vocabulary across the 2nd year. Keywordsinfant language comprehension; infant speech processing; lexical development; eye-tracking; online measures Children in the early stages of learning a language are often credited with "acquiring" new vocabulary, as if words come one by one into the child's possession. When we speak of acquiring something like a piano or a piece of property, the emphasis is on ownership, an odd way to characterize the complex and incremental processes involved in word learning. However, we also speak of acquiring skills, such as playing the piano, in which the emphasis is on gradual mastery rather than possession. It is increasingly evident that learning to recognize, understand, and speak a new word appropriately is a gradual process. Not only do infants respond meaningfully to more and more words over the 2nd year, they also respond with increasing speed and efficiency to each of the words they are learning. That is, rather than "acquiring" a new word in an all-or-none fashion, they get better at recognizing and interpreting the same word in more diverse and challenging contexts.Because comprehension is a mental activity not easily observable in infants' spontaneous behavior, the gradual emergence of understanding has been difficult to study with precision. However, with the refinement of procedures that track listeners' eye movements as they scan a visual array in response to speech, a technique used widely in research with adults (Tanenhaus, Magnusen, Dahan, & Chambers, 2000), it is now possible to monitor the time course of spoken language understanding in very young children. Using a looking-whilelistening procedure with infants from 15 to 24 months of age, Fernald, Pinto, Swingley, Weinberg, and McRoberts (1998) NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript understanding increase dramatically over the 2nd year. In that study, infants looked at pictures of objects while listening to speech naming one of the objects with a familiar word. Whereas 15-month-olds responded inconsistently and shifted their gaze to the correct picture only after the end of the target word, 24-month-olds were faster and more reliable in their responses, initiating a shift in gaze midway through the target word based on partial p...

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Rapid Word Learning by Fifteen‐Month‐Olds under Tightly Controlled Conditions

Cited by 215 publications

References 33 publications

Watching the infant brain learn words: effects of vocabulary size and experience

Watching the infant brain learn words: effects of vocabulary size and experience

Young children associate novel words with complex objects rather than salient parts.

Picking up speed in understanding: Speech processing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the 2nd year.

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