Young toddlers' word comprehension is flexible and efficient.

dc.contributor.author

Bergelson, Elika

dc.contributor.author

Swingley, Daniel

dc.coverage.spatial

United States

dc.date.accessioned

2016-08-04T17:33:04Z

dc.date.issued

2013

dc.description.abstract

Much of what is known about word recognition in toddlers comes from eyetracking studies. Here we show that the speed and facility with which children recognize words, as revealed in such studies, cannot be attributed to a task-specific, closed-set strategy; rather, children's gaze to referents of spoken nouns reflects successful search of the lexicon. Toddlers' spoken word comprehension was examined in the context of pictures that had two possible names (such as a cup of juice which could be called "cup" or "juice") and pictures that had only one likely name for toddlers (such as "apple"), using a visual world eye-tracking task and a picture-labeling task (n = 77, mean age, 21 months). Toddlers were just as fast and accurate in fixating named pictures with two likely names as pictures with one. If toddlers do name pictures to themselves, the name provides no apparent benefit in word recognition, because there is no cost to understanding an alternative lexical construal of the picture. In toddlers, as in adults, spoken words rapidly evoke their referents.

dc.identifier

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23991189

dc.identifier

PONE-D-12-38615

dc.identifier.eissn

1932-6203

dc.identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12630

dc.language

eng

dc.publisher

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

dc.relation.ispartof

PLoS One

dc.relation.isversionof

10.1371/journal.pone.0073359

dc.subject

Comprehension

dc.subject

Humans

dc.subject

Infant

dc.subject

Language

dc.title

Young toddlers' word comprehension is flexible and efficient.

dc.type

Journal article

duke.contributor.orcid

Bergelson, Elika|0000-0003-2742-4797

pubs.author-url

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23991189

pubs.begin-page

e73359

pubs.issue

8

pubs.organisational-group

Duke

pubs.organisational-group

Psychology and Neuroscience

pubs.organisational-group

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

pubs.publication-status

Published online

pubs.volume

8

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