Structural features of child-directed speech—isolated words, short sentence frames, and repetition—facilitate word segmentation, processing, and word learning¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2016 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Infants segment words from fluent speech only when the words also appear as isolated words, and familiar sentence frames speed toddlers' interpretation of nouns. → Schwab Jessica F. 2016 q2 i? Repetition across successive sentences, rather than distributed exposure, supports young children's novel word learning. → Schwab Jessica F. 2016 (2)

Evidence¶

Schwab Jessica F. 2016¶

Schwab Jessica F., Lew-Williams Casey. (2016). Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1393

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports a laboratory study of 8- to 10-month-olds showing isolated words support segmentation, and Fernald and Hurtado's finding that 18-month-olds were faster to interpret familiar nouns heard in sentence frames than in isolation. No effect sizes are printed.

"when 8- to 10-month-old infants were exposed to fluent Italian speech containing either fluent speech alone or a combination of fluent speech and isolated words, they were only able to segment words that appeared both in fluent speech and in isolation."

Schwab Jessica F. 2016 (2)¶

Schwab Jessica F., Lew-Williams Casey. (2016). Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1393

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports a short word-learning paradigm showing immediate repetition across successive sentences, not distributed exposure, enabled novel word learning; similar benefits appear in cross-situational word learning. No effect sizes are printed.

"2-year-old children only showed successful learning of novel words when exposures had been repeated across successive sentences, as opposed to distributed throughout labeling episodes"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Infants' preference for and learning benefit from child-directed speech change over development, with CDS advantages diminishing by the third year — related
• Prosodic and sound-level features of child-directed speech support infants' phoneme discrimination, word segmentation, and word learning — related
• Infant look-away follows a U-shaped pattern of information content, consistent with maintaining intermediate rates of information absorption (Goldilocks effect) — related
• Verbal labels have a special status in influencing visual processing beyond mere association — related