Reexamining the Vocabulary Spurt.

In this study vocabulary development of a sample of 42 Italian children was evaluated through monthly administration of the Italian version of the CDI. Data collection started at 1;0–1;1 for 32 children and at 1;3–1;4 for the remaining subjects and continued until children's vocabulary reached 200 words. At fixed stages of vocabulary size (50, 100 and 200 words), individual differences in percentile scores and vocabulary composition were examined. Individual growth curves were analysed in order to verify the presence of a vocabulary spurt and the type of lexical items which contributed most to rapid acceleration in vocabulary growth.Stylistic differences in vocabulary composition were examined regarding the ‘referential–expressive’ distinction, controlling vocabulary size. Data have shown that general trends in vocabulary development are quite similar to those obtained for other languages using CDI adaptations. Moreover, all children in this sample eventually exhibited a vocabulary spurt, even if some can be defined as ‘late spurters’. The type of lexical items which are learned during the spurt depend on both infant vocabulary size and referential score. About 28% of infants in this sample were defined ‘referential’ when their vocabulary size was about 50 words, but the stylistic differences disappeared at the 100- and 200-word stages.Composition of vocabulary did not differ in relation to precocity in reaching different stages of vocabulary development. The only exception was that infants who reached the 50-word stage first also had a vocabulary with a lower proportion of function words.

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Early lexical development in German: a study on vocabulary growth and vocabulary composition during the second and third year of life

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000902005330 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 735-757 ◽

Cited By ~ 55

Author(s):

CHRISTINA KAUSCHKE ◽

CHRISTOPH HOFMEISTER

Keyword(s):

Spontaneous Speech ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

Function Words ◽

Lexical Development ◽

Developmental Patterns ◽

Word Use ◽

Vocabulary Growth ◽

Noun Bias ◽

In The Beginning ◽

Vocabulary Spurt

This paper focuses on aspects of early lexical acquisition in German. There have been conflicting results in the literature concerning both the pattern of vocabulary growth and the composition of the early lexicon. Our study describes the development of various categories of words and questions the preponderance of nouns in spontaneous speech. 32 children were studied longitudinally through recordings made at age 1;1, 1;3, 1;9 and 3;0. The following properties of the data were investigated: vocabulary size in relation to age, frequency of word use, and distribution of word categories. The results show that use of both types and tokens increases with time. A trend analysis indicates an exponential increase in vocabulary production in the second year, followed by a further expansion. This vocabulary spurt-like pattern can be observed in the use of word types and tokens. The findings in regard to vocabulary composition illustrate the dynamics present in the development of word categories. In the beginning, children use mostly relational words, personal-social words and some onomatopoeic terms. These categories are gradually complemented with nouns, verbs, function words and other words so that we see a balanced lexicon by 3;0. Trend analyses clarify characteristic developmental patterns in regard to certain word categories. Our spontaneous speech data does not support a strong noun-bias hypothesis.

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Maternal labelling of novel and familiar objects: implications for children's development of lexical constraints

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000997003115 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 427-439 ◽

Cited By ~ 49

Author(s):

ELISE FRANK MASUR

Keyword(s):

Lexical Acquisition ◽

Play Interactions ◽

Conversational Interactions ◽

Children's Development ◽

Lexical Constraints ◽

Vocabulary Spurt ◽

Children’S Development ◽

Familiar Objects ◽

Naming Practices

Mothers' provision of names for novel and familiar toy animals was examined during play interactions with 20 infants observed at ages 0;10, 1;1, 1;5, and 1;9. Of particular interest were characteristics of mothers' speech which might bear on children's development of lexical principles or constraints. Analyses demonstrated that mothers facilitated their children's determination of reference and differentially adjusted their naming practices to novel, comprehended, and familiar animals. They virtually always named the whole object first. More important, the first mention of novel, but not comprehended or familiar animals involved both maternal naming and physical designation of the object 92% or more of the time. Thus, although a novel word's referent may be indeterminate logically, mothers specify it practically. These results support the position that maternal labelling practices may assist children in acquiring lexical principles and that lexical acquisition, perhaps even the vocabulary spurt, can proceed during natural conversational interactions before infants master lexical principles.

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A Cypriot Greek Adaptation of the CDI: Early Production of Translation Equivalents in a Bi-(dia)lectal Context

Journal of Greek Linguistics ◽

10.1163/15699846-01501003 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 122-145 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Loukia Taxitari ◽

Maria Kambanaros ◽

Kleanthes K. Grohmann

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Word Production ◽

Production Data ◽

Growing Up ◽

Mutual Exclusivity ◽

Lexical Development ◽

Word Usage ◽

Communicative Development ◽

Early Production ◽

Vocabulary Spurt

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) has been widely used to study children’s word production in both monolingual and bilingual contexts, in typical and atypical populations, and for the study of different aspects of language development, such as the use of mutual exclusivity. In this study, an adaptation of the CDI in Cypriot Greek is used to collect production data for post-vocabulary spurt children growing up in a bilectal community, where two different varieties of a language are used. Parents report that their children use translation equivalents for a single concept, and these increase as their total word production increases. Also girls seem to produce more translation equivalents than boys overall. This suggests that lexical development in bilectal communities might be more similar to bilingual rather than monolingual development, and that mutual exclusivity does not constrain word usage in such populations even during early word production.

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Hand preference for pointing gestures and bimanual manipulation around the vocabulary spurt period

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology ◽

10.1016/j.jecp.2011.04.009 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 110 (3) ◽

pp. 393-407 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

Hélène Cochet ◽

Marianne Jover ◽

Jacques Vauclair

Keyword(s):

Hand Preference ◽

Pointing Gestures ◽

Vocabulary Spurt

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Lexical Neighborhoods and the Word-Form Representations of 14-Month-Olds

Psychological Science ◽

10.1111/1467-9280.00485 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 480-484 ◽

Cited By ~ 189

Author(s):

Daniel Swingley ◽

Richard N. Aslin

Keyword(s):

Developmental Psychology ◽

Word Form ◽

Word Meanings ◽

Lexical Representations ◽

Fine Detail ◽

Developmental Continuity ◽

Fixation Task ◽

Perceptual Abilities ◽

Lexical Neighborhoods ◽

Vocabulary Spurt

The degree to which infants represent phonetic detail in words has been a source of controversy in phonology and developmental psychology. One prominent hypothesis holds that infants store words in a vague or inaccurate form until the learning of similar-sounding neighbors forces attention to subtle phonetic distinctions. In the experiment reported here, we used a visual fixation task to assess word recognition. We present the first evidence indicating that, in fact, the lexical representations of 14- and 15-month-olds are encoded in fine detail, even when this detail is not functionally necessary for distinguishing similar words in the infant's vocabulary. Exposure to words is sufficient for well-specified lexical representations, even well before the vocabulary spurt. These results suggest developmental continuity in infants' representations of speech: As infants begin to build a vocabulary and learn word meanings, they use the perceptual abilities previously demonstrated in tasks testing the discrimination and categorization of meaningless syllables.

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Measuring the vocabulary spurt: a reply to Mervis & Bertrand

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000900010175 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

pp. 241-246 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Beverly A. Goldfield ◽

J. Steven Reznick

Keyword(s):

Word Learning ◽

Reliable Indicator ◽

Cognitive Assessments ◽

Lexical Development ◽

Measure Change ◽

Vocabulary Spurt

ABSTRACTWe reply to Mervis & Bertrand's report of three children (aged 1; 6–1; 8 at the start of the study) who evidenced a ‘late’ vocabulary spurt. Differences in assessing productive vocabulary, and the questionable inference that size of the lexicon is a reliable indicator of the vocabulary spurt, make it inappropriate to compare these children to previous studies that directly measure change in rate of word learning. Further work using continuous records of lexical development and controls for repeated cognitive assessments is needed to test hypotheses about the spurt and related cognitive and linguistic achievements.

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Productive Vocabulary Size Predicts Event-related Potential Correlates of Fast Mapping in 20-Month-Olds

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2008.20087 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 20 (7) ◽

pp. 1266-1282 ◽

Cited By ~ 50

Author(s):

Janne von Koss Torkildsen ◽

Janne Mari Svangstu ◽

Hanna Friis Hansen ◽

Lars Smith ◽

Hanne Gram Simonsen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Word Processing ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Fast Mapping ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Second Year ◽

The Impact ◽

Vocabulary Spurt

Although it is well documented that children undergo a productive vocabulary spurt late in the second year, it is unclear whether this development is accompanied by equally significant advances in receptive word processing. In the present study, we tested an electrophysiological procedure for assessing receptive word learning in young children, and the impact of productive vocabulary size for performance in this task. We found that 20-month-olds with high productive vocabularies displayed an N400 incongruity effect to violations of trained associations between novel words and pictures, whereas 20-month-olds with low productive vocabularies did not. However, both high and low producers showed an N400 effect for common real words paired with an incongruous object. These findings indicate that there may be substantial differences in receptive fast mapping efficiency between typically developing children who have reached a productive vocabulary spurt and typically developing children who have not yet reached this productive spurt.

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