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A story about a word: does narrative presentation promote learning of a spatial preposition in German two-year-olds?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2012

KERSTIN NACHTIGÄLLER ,
KATHARINA J. ROHLFING  and
KARLA K. MCGREGOR
KERSTIN NACHTIGÄLLER*
Affiliation:
Bielefeld University, Germany
KATHARINA J. ROHLFING
Affiliation:
Bielefeld University, Germany
KARLA K. MCGREGOR
Affiliation:
Iowa University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Kerstin Nachtigäller, Bielefeld University, CITEC-Emergentist Semantics Group, Universitätsstraße 21–23, Bielefeld 33615, Germany. e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

We trained forty German-speaking children aged 1;8–2;0 in their comprehension of UNTER [UNDER]. The target word was presented within semantically organized input in the form of a ‘narrative’ to the experimental group and within ‘unconnected speech’ to the control group. We tested children's learning by asking them to perform an UNDER-relation before, immediately after, and again one day after the training using familiarized and unfamiliarized materials. Compared to controls, the experimental group learned better and retained more. Children with advanced expressive lexicons in particular were aided in generalizing to unfamiliarized materials by the narrative presentation. This study extends our understanding of how narrations scaffold young children's enrichment of nascent word knowledge.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , September 2013 , pp. 900 - 917
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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Footnotes

[*]

The research reported in this article was made possible by a Dilthey Fellowship (Research Initiative Focus on the Humanities) from the Volkswagen Foundation to Katharina Rohlfing. Many thanks to all children who participated in this study.

References

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