Children learn what words mean from hearing words used across a variety of contexts. Understanding how different contextual distributions relate to the words young children say is critical because context robustly affects basic learning and memory processes. This study examined children's everyday experiences using naturalistic video recordings to…

Young children who hear more child-directed speech (CDS) tend to have larger vocabularies later in childhood, but the specific characteristics of CDS underlying this link are currently underspecified. The present study sought to elucidate how the structure of language input boosts learning by investigating whether repetition of object labels in…

This study is consistent with a model of semantic memory that assumes that the memory store is organized primarily into noun categories, and that the process of retrieving information from this store consists of entering the appropriate category as a first step. (Authors)

A total of 96 first graders, fifth graders, and college students were asked to predict how many orally presented nouns they would later be able to recall or recognize. Results showed large developmental differences in prediction accuracy on the recall but not on the recognition tasks. (Author/JMB)