Two-year-olds learn novel nouns, verbs, and conventional actions from massed or distributed exposures.

Full Abstract

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.

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Author information

Author/s: Childers, Jane B (JB); Tomasello, Michael (M);

Affiliation: jane.childers(-atsign-)trinity.edu

Grants: HD35854-01 (Agency:United States NICHD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Developmental psychology (Dev Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Nov; vol 38 (issue 6) : pp 967-78

Dates: Created 2002/11/13; Completed 2003/04/07; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12428708, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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