Work

The Relation Between Preschoolers’ Vocabulary Development and Their Ability to Predict and Recognize Words

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: By age 2, children are developing foundational language processing skills, such as quickly recognizing words and predicting words before they occur. How do these skills relate to children's structural knowledge of vocabulary? Multiple aspects of language processing were simultaneously measured in a sample of 2-to-5-year-olds (N = 215): While older children were more fluent at recognizing words, at predicting words in a graded fashion, and at revising incorrect predictions, only revision was associated with concurrent vocabulary knowledge once age was accounted for. However, an exploratory longitudinal follow-up (N = 55) then found that word recognition and prediction skills were associated with rate of subsequent vocabulary development, but revision skills were not. We argue that prediction skills may facilitate language learning through enhancing processing speed.

Source: Child Development

DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13465

Authors: Chiara Gambi, Priya Jindal, Sophie Sharpe, Martin J Pickering, Hugh Rabagliati

Institutions: Cardiff University, University of Edinburgh

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: Leverhulme Trust, Economic and Social Research Council