CiteULike: briordan aoa

Comparing Semantic Space Models Using Child-Directed Speech

Brian Riordan — 2008-07-06T00:30:17-00:00

(2007)

Does frequency count? Parental input and the acquisition of vocabulary

Judith Goodman — 2008-06-29T16:13:27-00:00

Journal of Child Language, Vol. 35, No. 03. (2008), pp. 515-531.

Studies examining factors that influence when words are learned typically investigate one lexical category or a small set of words. We provide the first evaluation of the relation between input frequency and age of acquisition for a large sample of words. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory provides norming data on age of acquisition for 562 individual words collected from the parents of children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6. The CHILDES database provides estimates of frequency with which parents use these words with their children (age: 0 ; 7–7 ; 5; mean age: 36 months). For production, across all words higher parental frequency is associated with later acquisition. Within lexical categories, however, higher frequency is related to earlier acquisition. For comprehension, parental frequency correlates significantly with the age of acquisition only for common nouns. Frequency effects change with development. Thus, frequency impacts vocabulary acquisition in a complex interaction with category, modality and developmental stage.

Comparing semantic space models using child-directed speech

Brian Riordan — 2008-06-20T20:57:59-00:00

(2007), pp. 599-604.

Estimating When and How Words Are Acquired: A Natural Experiment on the Development of the Mental Lexicon

Auer — 2008-06-07T11:56:50-00:00

Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, Vol. 51, No. 3. (June 2008), pp. 750-758.

The Differential Influence of Lexical Parameters on Naming Latencies in German. A Study on Noun and Verb Picture Naming

Christina Kauschke — 2008-05-10T20:38:30-00:00

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

Abstract The present study investigates the effects of word category (nouns versus verbs) and their subcategories on naming latencies in German, with a focus on the influence of lexical parameters on naming performance. The experimental material met linguistic construction criteria and was carefully matched for age of spontaneous production, frequency, and name agreement. Additional lexical parameters (objective age-of-acquisition, word length, visual complexity, imageability) were obtained. The results demonstrated a clear effect of word category on naming latencies. This effect was supported by two different observations. First, there was evidence for category and subcategory effects in naming: nouns were named faster than verbs, and intransitive verbs were named faster than transitive verbs. Second, while objective age-of-acquisition (naming age) turned out to be an important predictor of reaction times for both word categories, naming latencies for nouns and verbs were affected differentially by other lexical parameters. The results are discussed with respect to current controversies on the noun–verb-asymmetry.

MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: User’s Guide and Technical Manual, Second Edition

L Fenson — 2008-04-27T19:22:36-00:00

(2007)

Acquiring the English adjective lexicon: relationships with input properties and adjectival semantic typology

Aleka Blackwell — 2008-04-27T19:17:30-00:00

Journal of Child Language, Vol. 32, No. 03. (2005), pp. 535-562.

What Can Graph Theory Tell Us About Word Learning and Lexical Retrieval?

Michael Vitevitch — 2008-04-13T03:01:43-00:00

Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, Vol. 51, No. 2. (April 2008), pp. 408-422.

The Large-Scale Structure of Semantic Networks: Statistical Analyses and a Model of Semantic Growth

Mark Steyvers‌ — 2008-03-20T15:03:59-00:00

Cognitive Science, Vol. 29, No. 1. (2005), pp. 41-78.

Age of acquisition: Its neural and computational mechanisms

Arturo Hernandez — 2008-03-20T01:09:22-00:00

Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 133, No. 4. (July 2007), pp. 638-650.

Syntax as a reflex: Neurophysiological evidence for early automaticity of grammatical processing

Friedemann Pulvermuller — 2007-08-13T06:24:21-00:00

Brain and Language, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to different degrees from language processing. Subjects were either passively distracted, by watching a silent video film, or their attention was actively streamed away from the language input by performing a demanding acoustic signal detection task. An early index of syntactic violations, the syntactic Mismatch Negativity (sMMN), distinguished between grammatical and ungrammatical speech even under strongest distraction. The magnitude of the early sMMN (at <150 ms) was unaffected by attention load of the distraction task. The independence of the early syntactic brain response of attentional distraction provides neurophysiological evidence for the automaticity of syntax and for its autonomy from other attention-demanding processes, including acoustic stimulus discrimination. The first attentional modulation of syntactic brain responses became manifest at a later stage, at ~200 ms, thus demonstrating the narrowness of the early time window of syntactic autonomy. We discuss these results in the light of modular and interactive theories of cognitive processing and draw inferences on the automaticity of both the cognitive MMN response and certain grammar processes in general.

Age of acquisition for naming and knowing: A new hypothesis

Elaine Funnell — 2008-03-07T17:16:34-00:00

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 59, No. 2. (2006), pp. 268-295.

This paper reports an investigation into the age of acquisition of object names and object knowledge in a cross-sectional study of 288 children aged between 3 years 7 months and 11 years 6 months, comprising equal numbers of boys and girls. The objects belonged to four categories: animals, fruit and vegetables, implements, and vehicles. They were presented in three image types: line drawings, black-and-white photographs, and coloured photographs. In the knowledge test, five probe questions were asked for each object given the spoken name. Results showed that line drawings were more difficult to name than either black-and-white photographs or coloured photographs, which did not differ. The boys significantly out-performed the girls at naming and knowing, both overall and specifically for the category of vehicles. Naming and knowledge increased steadily with age but while young children below about 6 years 6 months showed an advantage to naming, older children showed an advantage to knowing. Similarly, age-of-acquisition measures for each item revealed a significant shift in the relationship between naming and knowing at around 80 months. We argue that differences in learning experience lead younger and older children to associate object names with different types of information, and we suggest that this difference probably accounts for the age-of-acquisition effects reported in adult object naming.

Newly learned spoken words show long-term lexical competition effects

Jakke Tamminen — 2008-02-08T01:37:09-00:00

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 61, No. 3. (2008), pp. 361-371.

Newly learned spoken words (e.g., “cathedruke”) become fully engaged in the mental lexicon, as measured via lexical competition with their pre-existing phonological neighbours (e.g., “cathedral”), over the course of several hours or days, and this lexical restructuring is associated with sleep (Dumay & Gaskell, 2007). Here, we investigated the longer-term effects of word learning for three sets of novel words learned at different times using phoneme monitoring and repetition tasks. The effects of these exposure sessions on lexical memory were assessed in a battery of tests. Lexical decision latencies to pre-existing neighbouring words showed that lexical competition effects for the novel words remained observable 8 months after initial exposure. Furthermore, the order-of-acquisition of the novel words affected their production speed (but not recognition speed), with an advantage for earlier acquired words. The results suggest that the consolidation of novel words results in a long-term and stable change in the lexical competition process.

Support for hybrid models of the age of acquisition of English nouns

Jamie Reilly — 2008-01-30T03:53:57-00:00

pp. 1164-1170.

Age of acquisition (AoA) is a psycholinguistic construct that refers to the chronological age at which a given word is acquired. Contemporary theories of AoA have focused on lexical acquisition with respect to either the developing phonological or semantic systems. One way of testing the relative dominance of phonological or semantic contributions is through open-source psycholinguistic databases, whereby AoA may be correlated with other variables (e.g., morphology, semantics, phonology). We report two multiple regression analyses conducted on a corpus of English nouns with, respectively, subjective and objective AoA measures as the dependent variables and a combination of 10 predictors, including 2 semantic, 4 phonological, 2 morphological, and 2 lexical. This multivariate combination of predictors accounted for significant proportions of the variance of AoA in both analyses. We argue that this evidence supports hybrid models of language development that integrate multiple levels of processing—from sound to meaning.

Frequency, not age of acquisition, affects Italian word naming

Cristina Burani — 2007-10-03T03:00:44-00:00

European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 6. (November 2007), pp. 828-866.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the claim that age of acquisition (AoA) and word frequency effects are reduced or nonexistent in languages that have very regular letter-to-sound mappings, like Italian. The first two experiments (Exp. 1, Exp. 2) showed that frequency variables affect reading aloud and lexical decision in Italian. Variables interpretable as pertaining to a semantic component, including AoA, affected lexical decision but not reading aloud. In Experiments 3 and 4, a measure of frequency - child written word frequency (ChFreq) - and AoA were manipulated. Reading performance was affected by word frequency but not by AoA (Exp. 3), whereas lexical decision was affected by both variables (Exp. 4). In Experiments 5 and 6, ChFreq and AoA were manipulated orthogonally. Only frequency affected reading aloud, with no main effect or interaction involving AoA (Exp. 5). The effects of AoA and frequency interacted in Experiment 6 for lexical decision due to a larger effect of AoA for low frequency words than high frequency words. These results show that in languages with a transparent orthography word frequency may affect reading aloud in the absence of an effect of AoA because Italian readers employ lexical nonsemantic reading aloud. The effect of child written frequency points to the efficiency of the mappings between those orthographic and phonological word forms that were frequently encountered when learning to read.