Basic Word Learning Skills Project

We investigate the basic skills and strategies that young children bring to word learning. For example, we have tested theoretical explanations of word learning biases in early childhood, such as the “shape bias” (generalizing novel nouns on the basis of object shape) and the “mutual exclusivity bias” (treating novel labels as though they cannot apply to familiar objects).

For example, Amy Burk (MS ’06) assessed how 3-year-olds respond when they must learn new words for objects with familiar labels. Can children ignore their own “mutual exclusivity bias” when the speaker’s intended referent is made very clear? Working with Gator, a very appealing stuffed alligator, Amy presented children with pairs of objects, such as an apple (familiar) and latch hook (novel). She asked  “Can you give Gator the feppa? He wants the feppa because he’s so hungry. He’s really hungry so will you give Gator the feppa?” Without the information about Gator being hungry, children would nearly always assume that feppa referred to the novel latch hook, showing the mutual exclusivity bias. But they were able to apply the new label to the apple when given information about what Gator wanted, and they would generalize the new label to another apple later.

Studies like these help to clarify not only what children do when they hear new words, but why they do it. Amy’s study suggests, for example, that children’s biases may be based on their guesses about speakers’ intentions, consistent with the “social pragmatic theory” of word learning.

Villanova Preliteracy Project

Vocabulary size and scope is a key predictor of success in school, especially the growth of literacy.  Understanding the processes that contribute to differences in vocabulary acquisition in the preschool years has important implications for designing interventions that can foster school success. We have documented individual differences in children across settings and socioeconomic status, and we explore the social supports that facilitate rapid vocabulary growth.

Children learn vocabulary from other people. We are investigating the kinds of verbal and nonverbal strategies that parents and other adults use when they introduce 2- to 5-year-olds to new words. In recent work we have examined teacher and parent interactive strategies with young children, including their approaches to shared book reading. For some of these studies we have written and illustrated original storybooks allowing us to precisely manage the introduction of novel vocabulary.

In a sequence of studies recently published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, we used three original storybooks written by graduate students in our lab to determine whether the questions that an adult asks while reading to 3-year-olds can affect how well the children learn the new vocabulary from a story. We compared low level questions, such as “What color is the grapple?” to more cognitively demanding, high level questions “Why did they use a grapple instead of a car?” We also tried starting with low level and moving to high level questions, an approach called “scaffolding.” Children learned new vocabulary from repeated readings of the stories no matter what kinds of questions the reader asked, but they learned most when the adult used the “scaffolding” procedure.