The text of children's picture books contains more unique word types than a length-matched sample of child-directed speech¶

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? In total-sample comparisons, picture books contained 1.72 times more unique words than matched child-directed speech. → 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

Corpus comparison of a 100-picture-book corpus against length-matched contiguous CHILDES segments, using random sampling of token sizes to count unique word types. The article reports that "picture books contained 1.72 times more unique words than did child-directed speech." No effect size or significance test is printed.

"In the total sample, picture books contained 1.72 times more unique words than did child-directed speech."

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