Journal article
Snapshots of Children's Changing Biases During Language Development: Differential Weighting of Perceptual and Linguistic Factors Predicts Noun Age of Acquisition
Journal of cognition and development, v 14(4), pp 573-592
01 Oct 2013
Abstract
Word learning is a lifelong activity constrained by cognitive biases that people possess at particular points in development. Age of acquisition (AoA) is a psycholinguistic variable that may prove useful toward gauging the relative weighting of different phonological, semantic, and morphological factors at different phases of language acquisition and development. Our aim here was to evaluate AoA as a statistical tool for taking snapshots of cognitive development. We examined a large corpus of English nouns (n=1,381) with AoA as the outcome variable in three separate multivariate regressions, encompassing different age ranges (early-middle-late). Predictors included perceptual (e.g., imagery), phonological (e.g., phonological neighborhood density), and lexical (e.g., word length) factors. Different combinations of predictors accounted for significant proportions of the variance for different AoA ranges (i.e., early-middle-late). For example, imageability and frequency are stronger predictors of early relative to late word learning. These corpus analyses support a hybrid model of word learning in which multiple perceptual and linguistic factors are differentially weighted over time. This statistical approach may provide independent corroboration of and motivation for experimental studies in language learning and cognitive development.
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Details
- Title
- Snapshots of Children's Changing Biases During Language Development: Differential Weighting of Perceptual and Linguistic Factors Predicts Noun Age of Acquisition
- Creators
- Christopher H. Ramey - University of KansasEvangelia G. Chrysikou - University of KansasJamie Reilly - Temple University
- Publication Details
- Journal of cognition and development, v 14(4), pp 573-592
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- Number of pages
- 20
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts and Sciences
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000325786400005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84886446503
- Other Identifier
- 991019176794604721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Psychology, Developmental
- Psychology, Experimental