In word learning, learners need to identify the referent of words by leveraging the fact that the same word may co-occur with different sets of objects. This raises the question, what do children remember from "in the moment" that they can use for cross-situational learning? Furthermore, do children represent pictures of familiar animals…

A strong predictor of children's language is performance on non-word repetition (NWR) tasks. However, the basis of this relationship remains unknown. Some suggest that NWR tasks measure phonological working memory, which then affects language growth. Others argue that children's knowledge of language/language experience affects NWR performance. A…

Background and Aims: The aim of the current study is to assess the validity of the Cross-linguistic lexical task (CLT) against direct and indirect measures of lexical skills across 2-6 years of age, for a crucial period of lexical development. In addition to evaluating relationships between measures at the level of total score, we also explored…

Studies on multilingual word learning have focused on identifying a bilingual advantage over monolingual peers, paying little attention to the relationships between bilinguals' existing vocabulary size and novel word learning. This study compared monolingual and bilingual school-age children on word learning tasks in familiar and unfamiliar…

By 12 months, English-learning infants have an awareness of the sound patterns of word forms that constitute acceptable labels for objects in their native language. In the following experiments, we replicated and extended previous findings that Canadian English-learning infants will not link function-like words with novel objects. Across three…

To efficiently learn new words, children use constraints such as mutual exclusivity (ME) to narrow the search for potential referents. The current study investigated the use of ME in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) peers matched on nonverbal cognition. Thirty-two toddlers with ASD and 26 NT toddlers participated…

Word segmentation is a crucial step in children's vocabulary learning. While computational models of word segmentation can capture infants' performance in small-scale artificial tasks, the examination of early word segmentation in naturalistic settings has been limited by the lack of measures that can relate models' performance to developmental…

There is consensus that the adult lexicon exhibits lexical competition. In particular, substantial evidence demonstrates that words with more phonologically similar neighbors are recognized less efficiently than words with fewer neighbors. How and when these effects emerge in the child's lexicon is less clear. In the current paper, we build on…

This study investigated how repeating a video-lecture-based task affects second language (L2) learners' processing and incidental acquisition of technical vocabulary as well as the relationship between processing and lexical gains. The participants were 75 Chinese learners of L2 English. Thirty participants performed the task once (control group),…

This study aimed to adapt and validate the Word Complexity Measure (WCM) for Persian-speaking toddlers. The WCM is a tool for assessing phonological complexity, originally proposed by Stoel-Gammon. The study was conducted in two phases: (1) adapting the WCM parameters to the Persian language and (2) conducting a validation study with 60…

Research suggests that bilinguals often have weaker vocabulary in their second language compared to that of monolinguals (e.g., Hoff, 2013). It is thus important to identify factors that may facilitate vocabulary learning for bilinguals. One suggested factor is the presence of orthography while learning new oral vocabulary. The current study aims…

There are two broad views of children's theory of mind. The mentalist view is that it emerges in infancy and is possibly innate. The minimalist view is that it emerges more gradually in childhood and is heavily dependent on learning. According to minimalism, children initially understand behaviors rather than mental states, and they are assisted…

We studied English-learning children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words from sentences containing truth-functional negation (Exp1) and to use the semantics of negation to inform word meaning (Exp2). In Exp1, 22-month-olds (n = 21) heard dialogues introducing a novel verb in either negative-transitive "("Mary didn't blick the…

This study aimed to establish normative data for 145 words using phonological and semantic association tasks with 242 French schoolchildren, ranging from ages 5 (Grande Section) to 8 (Cours Elémentaire 2), providing a fundamental resource for future research and educational planning. The participants were engaged in two primary tasks: a free…

How do children succeed in learning a word? Research has shown robustly that, in ambiguous labeling situations, young children assume novel labels to refer to unfamiliar rather than familiar objects. However, ongoing debates center on the underlying mechanism: Is this behavior based on lexical constraints, guided by pragmatic reasoning, or simply…