Sound versus meaning: What matters most in early word learning?

Abstract

Previous work suggests that phonological neighborhood density is a key factor in shaping early lexical acquisition. Such studies have, however, have not considered how semantic neighborhoods may influence word-learning. We studied how phonological and semantic densities affect both comprehension and production of nouns from the Macarthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI). New measures of semantic and phonological densities, along with child-directed word frequency counts were used to predict the percentage of children who know each word at different ages (8 -30 months) as indicated in MCDI lexical norms. Production was predicted by frequency and phonological density at all time points, replicating previous research. Semantic density predicted production only at 30 months. Comprehension norms were predicted by frequency and semantic density, and never by phonological density. Two-and three-way interactions reveal that semantic density may moderate effects in production, while sound density may moderate effects in comprehension.

Phonology, Semantics, and the Comprehension–Expression Gap in Emerging Lexicons

“…The PND effect for expressive lexicons was first reported by colleagues (e.g., Storkel, 2001, 2004a) and has since been replicated (Carlson, Sonderegger, & Bane, 2014;Stokes, 2010Stokes, , 2014Stokes, Bleses, Basbøll, & Lambertsen, 2012;Stokes, Kern, & dos Santos, 2012;Storkel, 2009), but the study of Sahni and Rogers (2008) was the first report of an SND effect on children's receptive lexicons. This result raises the intriguing proposition that, in addition to word frequency, semantics determines which words a child comes to understand, but phonology determines which words are first uttered.…”

“…To date, we know of only two studies that asked whether there are qualitative differences in the statistical properties of the words that children say and understand (Sahni & Rogers, 2008;Stokes, 2014). The first (Sahni & Rogers, 2008) reported on the statistical properties of words in the receptive and expressive lexicons of children aged 8-30 months.…”

“…To date, we know of only two studies that asked whether there are qualitative differences in the statistical properties of the words that children say and understand (Sahni & Rogers, 2008;Stokes, 2014). The first (Sahni & Rogers, 2008) reported on the statistical properties of words in the receptive and expressive lexicons of children aged 8-30 months. They used lexical norms from the Lex2005 database inventories (Dale & Fenson, 1996) and three sets of words from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MBCDI) checklists (Fenson et al, 1993), that is, Infant Knows (8-16 months), Infant Says (8-16 months), and Toddler Says (16-30 months).…”

“…Specifically, PND refers to the number of words that differ from a target word by a single phoneme (Charles-Luce & Luce, 1990). It should be noted, however, that Sahni and Rogers (2008) adopted a different metric of PND, namely, Joanisse and Seidenberg's (1999) PND metric of degree of shared binary distinctive features (e.g., voiced/voiceless). Sahni and Rogers also included the input frequency of the words.…”

Biomimetic learning, not learning biomimetics: A survey of developmental learning

“…This is however culturally dependent, and research is done to determine influences and recommend methods [39]- [42]. Order of presentation affects learning rate and the learner can accelerate learning by providing online direction [19], [43], [44].…”