Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T03:47:49.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Understanding and assessing word comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2015

BEVERLY A. GOLDFIELD ,
CHRISTINA GENCARELLA  and
KEVIN FORNARI
BEVERLY A. GOLDFIELD*
Affiliation:
Rhode Island College
CHRISTINA GENCARELLA
Affiliation:
Rhode Island College
KEVIN FORNARI
Affiliation:
Rhode Island College
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Beverly A. Goldfield, Department of Psychology, Rhode Island College, 600 Mt. Pleasant Avenue, Providence, RI 02908. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The intermodal preferential looking (IPL) task was developed to assess comprehension in infants and toddlers. We extend this methodology to examine word comprehension in preschool children using two measures: proportion of looking time to target (LTT) and longest look (LL) to target. Children (3–6 years) were tested with the IPL for comprehension of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Both LTT and LL scores showed that, across all ages, eye gaze to the target word increased from baseline to test; there were higher scores for nouns compared to verbs and adjectives. We also compare IPL performance to scores on a standardized test of receptive vocabulary (the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Fourth Edition). Correlations with Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores were stronger for LTT than LL measures. The IPL may provide an alternative method for assessing word comprehension in preschool children with behavioral limitations.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 529 - 549
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allopenna, P. D., Magnuson, J. S., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and Language, 38, 419–439.Google Scholar
Benedict, H. (1979). Early lexical development: Comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language, 6, 183–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2012). At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 3253–3258.Google Scholar
Brock, J., Norbury, C., Einav, S., & Nation, K. (2008). Do individuals with autism process words in context? Evidence from language-mediated eye-movements. Cognition, 108, 896–904.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carroll, J. B., Davies, P., & Richman, B. (1971). American heritage word frequency book. Boston: Houghton–Mifflin.Google Scholar
Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 84–107.Google Scholar
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2007). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (4th ed.). Bloomington, IL: Pearson.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D., & Pethick, S. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, 174–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., Perfors, A., & Marchman, V. A. (2006). Picking up speed in understanding: Speech processing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the second year. Developmental Psychology, 42, 98–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Swingley, D., & Pinto, J. P. (2001). When half a word is enough: Infants can recognize spoken words using partial phonetic information. Child Development, 72, 1003–1015.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., Zangl, R., Portillo, A. L., & Marchman, V. A. (2008). Looking while listening: Using eye movements to monitor spoken language comprehension by infants and young children. In Sekerina, I. A., Fernandez, E. M., & Clahsen, H. (Eds.), Developmental psycholinguistics: On line methods in children's language processing (pp. 97–135). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Seligman, M. E., & Gelman, R. (1976). Language in the two-year-old. Cognition, 4, 189–202.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Cauley, K. M., & Gordon, L. (1987). The eyes have it: Lexical and syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm. Journal of Child Language, 14, 23–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, A. J., & Jacobson, M. D. (1982). Basic reading vocabularies. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Harris, M., Yeeles, C., Chasin, J., & Oakley, Y. (1995). Symmetries and asymmetries in early lexical comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language, 22, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Houston-Price, C., Mather, E., & Sakkalou, E. (2007). Discrepancy between parental reports of infants’ receptive vocabulary and infants’ behavior in a preferential looking task. Journal of Child Language, 34, 701–724.Google Scholar
Hudry, K., Leadbitter, K., Temple, K., Sionims, V., McConachie, H., Aldred, C., et al. (2010). Preschoolers with autism show greater impairment in receptive compared with expressive language abilities. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 45, 681–690.Google Scholar
Huettig, F., & Altmann, G. T. M. (2005). Word meaning and the control of eye fixation: Semantic competitor effects and the visual world paradigm. Cognition, 96, B23–B32.Google Scholar
Huettig, F., Rommers, J., & Meyer, A. (2011). Using the visual world paradigm to study language processing: A review and critical evaluation. Acta Psychologica, 137, 151–171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huttenlocher, J. (1974). The origins of language comprehension. In Solso, R. L (Ed.), Theories in cognitive psychology. Potomac, MD: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Johnson, E. K., & Huettig, F. (2011). Eye movements during language-mediated visual search reveal a strong link between overt visual attention and lexical processing in 36-month-olds. Psychological Research, 75, 35–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Killing, S. E. A., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2008). Move it! Visual feedback enhances validity of preferential looking as a measure of individual differences in vocabulary in toddlers. Developmental Science, 11, 525–530.Google Scholar
Meints, K., Plunkett, K., & Harris, P. L. (1999). When does an ostrich become a bird: The role of typicality in early word comprehension. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1072–1078.Google Scholar
Meints, K., Plunkett, K., & Harris, P. L. (2008). Eating apples and houseplants: Typicality constraints on thematic roles in early verb learning. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 434–463.Google Scholar
Mullen, E. M. (1995). The Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Bloomington, IL: Pearson.Google Scholar
Reznick, J. S. (1990). Visual preference as a test of infant word comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 145–166.Google Scholar
Reznick, J. S., & Goldfield, B. A. (1992). Rapid change in lexical development in comprehension and production. Developmental Psychology, 28, 406–413.Google Scholar
Richards, J. E., & Anderson, D. R. (2004). Attentional inertia in children's extended looking at television. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 32, 163–212.Google Scholar
Schafer, G. (2005). Infants can learn decontextualized words before their first birthday. Child Development, 76, 87–96.Google Scholar
Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (1998). Rapid word learning by 15-month-olds under tightly controlled conditions. Child Development, 69, 309–320.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. (1979). Perceiving bimodally specified events in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 15, 626–636.Google Scholar
Styles, S., & Plunkett, K. (2009). What is “word understanding” for the parent of a one-year-old? Matching the difficulty of a lexical comprehension task to a parental CDI report. Journal of Child Language, 36, 895–908.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swenson, L. D., Kelley, E., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. R. (2007). Processes of language acquisition in children with autism: Evidence from preferential looking. Child Development, 78, 542–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632–1634.Google Scholar
Tenenbaum, E. J., Amso, D., Abar, B., & Sheinkopf, S. J. (2014). Attention and word learning in autistic, language delayed, and typically developing children. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, Article 490.Google Scholar
Thomas, D. G., Campos, J. J., Shucard, D. W., Ramsay, D. S., & Shucard, J. (1981). Semantic comprehension in infancy: A signal detection analysis. Child Development, 52, 798–803.Google Scholar
Tincoff, R., & Jusczyk, P. W. (1999). Some beginnings of word comprehension in 6-month-olds. Psychological Sciences, 10, 172–174.Google Scholar
Tincoff, R., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2012). Six-month-olds comprehend words that refer to parts of the body. Infancy, 17, 432–444.Google Scholar
Walker-Andrews, A. S., Haviland, J. M., Huffman, L., & Toci, L. (1994). Preferential looking in intermodal perception by children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 99–107.Google Scholar
Zeno, S. M., Ivens, S. H., Millard, R. T., & Duvvuri, R. (1995). Educators’ word frequency guide. New York: Touchstone Applied Science Associates.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, I. L., Steiner, V. G., & Pond, R. E. (2002). Preschool Language Scale—4. Bloomington, IN: Pearson.Google Scholar