Two-year-old children were taught either 6 novel nouns, 6 novel verbs, or 6 novel actions over 1 month. In each condition, children were exposed to some items in massed presentations (on a single day) and some in distributed presentations (over the 2 weeks). Children's comprehension and production was tested at 3 intervals after training. In comprehension, children learned all types of items in all training conditions at all retention intervals. For production, the main findings were that (a) production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type, (b) children produced more new nouns than verbs, (c) production of words was better following distributed than massed exposure, and (d) time to testing (immediate, 1 day, 1 week) did not affect retention. A follow-up study showed that the most important timing variable was the number of different days of exposure, with more days facilitating production. Results are discussed in terms of 2 key issues: (a) the domain-generality versus domain-specificity of processes of word learning and (b) the relative ease with which children learn nouns versus verbs.

Two studies investigating the linguistic representations underlying English-speaking 2 1/2-year-olds' production of transitive utterances are reported. The first study was a training study in which half the children heard utterances with full nouns as agent and patient, and half the children heard utterances with both pronouns (i.e., He's [verb]-ing it) and also full nouns. In subsequent testing, only children who had been trained with pronouns and nouns were able to produce a transitive utterance creatively with a nonce verb. The second study reported an analogous set of findings, but in comprehension. Together, the results of these 2 studies suggest that English-speaking children build many of their early linguistic constructions around certain specific lexical or morphological items and patterns, perhaps especially around particular pronoun configurations.

No abstract

This study examines infants' joint attention behavior and language development in a rural village in Nigeria. Participants included 8 younger (1;0 to 1;5, M age = 1;2) and 8 older toddlers (1;7 to 2;7, M age = 2;1). Joint attention behaviors in social interaction contexts were recorded and coded at two time points 6 months apart. Analyses revealed that these toddlers were producing more high level joint attention behaviors than less complex behaviors. In addition, the quality and quantity of behaviors produced by these Nigerian children was similar to those found in other cultures. In analyses of children's noun and verb comprehension and production (in relation to the number of nouns or verbs on a parental checklist), parents reported proportionally more verbs than nouns, perhaps because Ngas has some linguistic characteristics that are similar to languages in which a noun bias is not seen (e.g., Mandarin Chinese). An examination of the interrelations of joint attention and language development revealed that joint attention behaviors were related to both noun and verb development at different times. The set of results is important for understanding the emergence of joint attention in traditional cultures, the comprehension and production of nouns and verbs given the specific linguistic properties of a language, and the importance that early social contexts may have for language development.

This paper examines children’s attention to cross-situational information during word learning. Korean-speaking children in Korea and English-speaking children in the US were taught four nonce words that referred to novel actions. For each word, children saw four related events: half were shown events that were very similar (Close comparisons), half were shown events that were not as similar (Far comparisons). The prediction was that children would compare events to each other and thus be influenced by the events shown. In addition, children in these language groups could be influenced differently as their verb systems differ. Although some differences were found across language, children in both languages were influenced by the type of events shown, suggesting that they are using a comparison process. Thus, this study provides evidence for comparison, a new mechanism to describe how children learn new action words, and demonstrates that this process could apply across languages.