Psychology Commons^™

Early Verb Learners: Creative Or Not?, Jane B. Childers

Psychology Faculty Research

This monograph describes a longitudinal study of eight children's first verb uses including an analysis of the variety of words used in conjunction with 34 targeted verbs, the variety of utterances produced, and the patterns of developmental change in the first 10 uses of these verbs. These data are important because most diary studies have included very few children at a time and have not focused on the beginnings of verb learning. Thus, these results advance our understanding of an early stage of verb learning that has received relatively little attention.