Input and Processing Factors Affecting Infants’ Vocabulary Size at 19 and 25 Months

Frontiers in Psychology

卷:9

James Morgan¹  Katherine Demuth²  Jae Yung Song³ 

[1] Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States;

[2] Department of Linguistics, Centre for Language Sciences, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia;

[3] Department of Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, United States;

关键词: language acquisition;    individual differences;    vocabulary size;    infant-directed speech;    word recognition;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02398

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This study examined the relative contributions of three factors to individual differences in vocabulary development: the acoustic quality of mothers’ speech, the quantity of mothers’ speech, and infants’ ability to recognize words. To examine the quality and quantity of mothers’ speech, recordings were collected from 48 mothers when their infants were 17 months old. Infants’ ability to recognize words was gauged by their performance in a perception experiment at 19 months. We examined the relationship between these measures and infants’ vocabulary size at 19 and 25 months. The quantity of mothers’ speech accounted for the greatest amount of variance in infants’ vocabulary size at 19 months; infants’ ability to recognize words followed next. At 25 months, when mothers’ speech alone is presumably no longer the primary input for infants, infants’ ability to recognize words at 19 months was a better predictor of vocabulary size. The acoustic quality of mothers’ speech was not correlated with infants’ vocabulary size at either age. The findings highlight the importance of considering multiple factors that contribute to early word learning, providing a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the facilitation process.

【 授权许可】

Unknown