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The effect of previously learned words on the child's acquisition of words for similar referents*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Michael Tomasello ,
Sara Mannle  and
Lori Werdenschlag
Michael Tomasello*
Affiliation:
Emory University
Sara Mannle*
Affiliation:
Emory University
Lori Werdenschlag*
Affiliation:
Emory University
*
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
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Abstract

The current study assessed the child's learning of an object label in two conditions: when its referent was highly similar and when its referent was highly dissimilar to the referent of a known child word. Twenty-two 2-year-old children were taught the name for an object. In a session several days subsequent, they were taught names for two new objects: one which was highly similar and one which was highly dissimilar to the referent of the word learned in the first session (two stimulus sets assured counterbalancing). In this second session, children produced the word with the similar referent more often than the word with the dissimilar referent. In third and fourth sessions (several days later), children continued to show better performance with the similar word in comprehension. These results were interpreted as evidence that young children find it easier to learn a new word when they are able to contrast its referent with that of a word they already know.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , October 1988 , pp. 505 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank the children and mothers who made this study possible. Our thanks also go to Larry Barsalou and Robyn Fivush for helpful comments. This research was supported in part by NIH Grant R03 MH38997-01A1 to the first author.

References

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