Journal
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Volume 44, Issue 7, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12847
Keywords
Word learning; Semantic network; Phonological network; Network growth; Cross-linguistic analysis
Categories
Funding
- Fyssen Foundation
- NSF [1659585, 1528526]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- SBE Off Of Multidisciplinary Activities [1659585] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [1528526] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Children tend to produce words earlier when they are connected to a variety of other words along the phonological and semantic dimensions. Though these semantic and phonological connectivity effects have been extensively documented, little is known about their underlying developmental mechanism. One possibility is that learning is driven by lexical network growth where highly connected words in the child's early lexicon enable learning of similar words. Another possibility is that learning is driven by highly connected words in the external learning environment, instead of highly connected words in the early internal lexicon. The present study tests both scenarios systematically in both the phonological and semantic domains across 10 languages. We show that phonological and semantic connectivity in the learning environment drives growth in both production- and comprehension-based vocabularies, even controlling for word frequency and length. This pattern of findings suggests a word learning process where children harness their statistical learning abilities to detect and learn highly connected words in the learning environment.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available