Participants: 18-month-olds

Research Question:

When speaking to young children, we often simplify our language by using single words instead of complete sentences. Adults might say to an infant “Doggie! See the doggie? “ placing the focused word in isolation, something that rarely occurs in speech among adults. Is this kind of simplification helpful to children learning new words? In this study we tested whether learning words presented by themselves (in isolation) would actually be easier for children than learning words presented in a full sentence, either at the end (in final position) or in the middle (in medial position).

Research Procedure: Children participated in a “looking-while-listening” task, looking at pictures as they listened to speech naming one of the pictures. First we taught them a novel word in association with a picture of an unfamiliar object. Children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: In the ISOLATED WORD condition, they heard “Look at that! Toma. Toma. Do you see it?” In the FINAL WORD condition, they heard “Look at the Toma. See the Toma?” And in the MEDIAL WORD condition they heard “Look at the Toma over there. See the Toma there?” After familiarizing children with the novel word Toma in different ways, we then tested their retention of the word to see if one way of teaching was more effective.

Findings and Implications:

It turns out that new words heard first in isolation were NOT easier for children to learn. Only infants who heard Toma at the end of the sentence, in final position, showed evidence of learning the novel word. Children take advantage of the short, familiar carrier phrase leading up to a new word – i.e. “Where’s the…”. These “fixed frames”, used frequently in speech to children, apparently help them to “listen ahead” to predict the new information. These results do NOT imply that parents should not use isolated words with their children! In the ‘real world’ outside the laboratory, children encounter new words in many different kinds of contexts, and parents should not attempt to be ‘strategic’ in how they present new words. What’s most interesting about these results is that very young language learners are paying attention to all the words in everyday phrases like “Look at the…” and “Where’s the…”, not just the name of the new object. Their attention to these sentence frames helps them anticipate and learn the upcoming word at the end of the sentence.

Presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development 2003 (abstract)

Our thanks to all the parents and children who participated in this study! You have made a valuable contribution to the scientific understanding of early language learning, and we very much appreciate your generosity.