LangDiv: Beyond object-label mappings: A temporal microanalysis of toddler semantic and lexical integration

This research asks how the words that children already know help them to learn new words. That is, is it easier or harder to learn a new word that either sounds like or is similar in meaning to words the child already knows? Answering this question benefits parents and educators with information about how best to expose children to new words. Children are tested online and do not need to come to a university campus; therefore, this project expands knowledge on language development in children who come from a wide range of socioeconomic, educational, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. This research also provides opportunities for training two graduate students from groups traditionally underrepresented in science. These students are role models for students from similar backgrounds who make up a large proportion of the undergraduate student population where the research is conducted. Finally, this research involves many undergraduate student researchers (including from groups underrepresented in science), who gain important skills for career readiness in the workforce through their work on this project. The exposure that students get to young children also provides them with information about whether they would like a career working with or studying this population. This project uses priming methods with 24-month-old children to ask if a newly learned word is affected if we "prime" children’s memory of it by preceding the new word with a word that the child already knows that shares either meaning or sound with the new word. Researchers teach children new words for objects from familiar categories, such as vehicles and animals, for which individual children produce many words. If a word for a new animal (e.g., raccoon) connects with a child’s existing knowledge of animals, then hearing a related word first (e.g., dog) should affect how much time it takes for children to identify a picture for a newly learned word (e.g., raccoon) compared to a picture of another newly learned word (e.g., carriage), relative to being primed with an unrelated word (e.g., cup). Similarly, if a new word (e.g., carriage) sounds like a word that the child already knows (e.g., cat which starts with the same sound), then seeing a picture of a cat before seeing a picture of the newly learned carriage should affect how much time it takes the child to identify the picture of the carriage vs. another newly learned word that starts with a different sound. This research not only asks how words that children already know affect how they learn new words but it also seeks to determine the time course of new words as they become connected with toddlers’ existing vocabulary. Research has already shown that adults more readily connect new words with known words that share meaning or sound if they learn words through contrastive labeling (which is learning a new word in the context of a known word) compared to direct labeling (which is simply showing a new object and saying its name). This project asks if toddlers are similar to adults in this regard, thereby providing a life-span view of language learning. Comparing these word teaching methods provides further information to parents and educators about how to expose young children to new words for greatest success in language learning. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.