Individual picture books typically contain more unique words at a given sample size than individual conversations¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Individual books typically, though not always, contain more unique words given the sample size than does a conversation. → Montag Jessica L. 2015

Evidence¶

Montag Jessica L. 2015¶

Montag Jessica L., Jones Michael N., Smith Linda B. (2015). The words children hear: Picture books and the statistics for language learning. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615594361

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Figure 1b plots type and token counts of the 100 individual books and the individual CHILDES conversations. The article describes the plotted pattern as books' dots mostly above conversations' dots, a pattern it calls underestimated by the relatively small sample of books. No effect size is printed.

"individual books typically (but of course not always) contain more unique words given the sample size than does a conversation (the small black dots indicating the number of types in individual books are mostly above small gray dots indicating the types in conversations)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• At matched token sizes, samples of picture-book text almost never contain fewer unique word types than samples of child-directed speech — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• The text of children's picture books contains more unique word types than a length-matched sample of child-directed speech — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• The greater diversity of book input arises mainly because different books sample the language more broadly than different conversations do — related