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Toddlers Encode Similarities Among Novel Words From Meaningful Sentences, Erica H. Wojcik, Jenny R. Saffran
Toddlers Encode Similarities Among Novel Words From Meaningful Sentences, Erica H. Wojcik, Jenny R. Saffran
Psychology
Toddlers can learn about the meanings of individual words from the structure and semantics of the sentences in which they are embedded. However, it remains unknown whether toddlers encode similarities among novel words based on their positions within sentences. In three experiments, two-year-olds listened to novel words embedded in familiar sentence frames. Some novel words consistently occurred in the subject position across sentences, and others in the object position across sentences. An auditory semantic task was used to test whether toddlers encoded similarities based on sentential position, for (a) pairs of novel words that occurred within the same sentence, and …
Toddlers Activate Lexical Semantic Knowledge In The Absence Of Visual Referents: Evidence From Auditory Priming, Jon A. Willits, Erica H. Wojcik, Mark S. Seidenberg, Jenny R. Saffran
Toddlers Activate Lexical Semantic Knowledge In The Absence Of Visual Referents: Evidence From Auditory Priming, Jon A. Willits, Erica H. Wojcik, Mark S. Seidenberg, Jenny R. Saffran
Psychology
Language learners rapidly acquire extensive semantic knowledge, but the development of this knowledge is difficult to study, in part because it is difficult to assess young children's lexical semantic representations. In our studies, we solved this problem by investigating lexical semantic knowledge in 24-month-olds using the Head-turn Preference Procedure. In Experiment 1, looking times to a repeating spoken word stimulus (e.g., kitty-kitty-kitty) were shorter for trials preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., dog-dog-dog) than trials preceded by an unrelated word (e.g., juice-juice-juice). Experiment 2 yielded similar results using a method in which pairs of words were presented on the …