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Similarity neighbourhoods of words in young children's lexicons*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Jan Charles-Luce  and
Paul A. Luce
Jan Charles-Luce*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
Paul A. Luce*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
*
Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
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Abstract

Similarity neighbourhoods for words in young children's lexicons were investigated using three computerized databases. These databases were representative of three groups of native English speakers: 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults. Computations relating to the similarity neighbourhoods of words in the children's and adult's lexicon revealed that words in the 5- and 7-year-olds' lexicons have many fewer similar neighbours than the same words analyzed in the adult lexicon. Thus, young children may employ more global recognition strategies because words are more discriminable in memory. The neighbourhood analyses provide a number of insights into the processes of auditory word recognition in children and the possible structural organization of words in the young child's mental lexicon.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 1990 , pp. 205 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported, in part, by NIH Research grant NS-12179 and, in part, by NIH Training Grant NS-07134 to Indiana University. We would like to thank Beth Greene and Debbie Burns for their assistance with the children's lexicons and David B. Pisoni and Linda B. Smith for their helpful comments and suggestions.

References

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