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The influence of exposure to phonological neighbours on preschoolers' novel word production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2002

TAMARA L. DEMKE ,
SUSAN A. GRAHAM  and
PAUL D. SIAKALUK
TAMARA L. DEMKE
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
SUSAN A. GRAHAM
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
PAUL D. SIAKALUK
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Abstract

We investigated the influence of exposure to phonologically similar words on four-year-olds' acquisition of novel object words. In Experiment 1, hearing phonological neighbours BEFORE learning a new word did not influence children's novel word productions. In Experiment 2, when children heard the phonological neighbours of a novel word AFTER learning a new word, they correctly produced the target word more often than children who did not receive this exposure. These findings suggest that exposing children to similar sounding words after a novel word was introduced may have helped maintain a representation of that word in working memory, leading to enhanced word learning.

Type
NOTE
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , May 2002 , pp. 379 - 392
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was supported by an operating grant awarded to the second author from NSERC of Canada. The first author was supported by summer studentships from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. The third author was supported by a graduate fellowship from NSERC of Canada. We thank the parents, children, and adults who participated in the studies and the staff at the following preschools for their kind assistance: Rosemont Child Care Centre, Charleswood Day Nursery, Pleasant Heights Child Development Centre, Whitehorn Playcare, Silver Springs Daycare Centre, Riverbend Day Care Centre, Inglewood Child Development, Coral Springs Childcare Society, Churchill Park Day Care Centre, South Family YMCA Daycare, Ranchlands Playcare, Calgary Herald Special Edition Child Development Centre, Forest Heights Childcare Centre, Berkshire Christian Daycare, Just For You Creative Learning Child Care, Bow Trail Daycare, Family ‘N’ Friends Childcare, Heritage Square Childcare Centre, Edgemont Childcare Centre, Ranchlands Panda Child Development Centre. We thank Jennifer Storms for her assistance with this research. We also thank Penny Pexman and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version.