Journal article
Defusing the childhood vocabulary explosion
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Vol.317(5838), pp.631-631
08/03/2007
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144073
PMID: 17673655
Abstract
During the second year of life, the rate at which children acquire new words accelerates dramatically. This has led the field of language acquisition to posit specialized mechanisms that leverage the few words learned in the initial slow phase for faster vocabulary growth later. Simulations and mathematical analysis demonstrate that specialized cognitive changes are unnecessary. The acceleration in lexical acquisition is a necessary by-product of learning if (i) multiple words are learned in parallel and (ii) words are distributed such that there are few words that can be acquired quickly and many difficult ones.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Defusing the childhood vocabulary explosion
- Creators
- Bob McMurray - Department of Psychology, E11 SSH, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. bob-mcmurray@uiowa.edu
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Vol.317(5838), pp.631-631
- Publisher
- United States
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.1144073
- PMID
- 17673655
- ISSN
- 0036-8075
- eISSN
- 1095-9203
- Grant note
- DC008089-01 / NIDCD NIH HHS
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 08/03/2007
- Academic Unit
- Communication Sciences and Disorders; Linguistics; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Otolaryngology
- Record Identifier
- 9984070874402771
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