Acquisition of Receptive Vocabulary in the Toddler-Age Child

Abstract

VINCENT-SMITH, LISBETH; BRICKER, DIANE; and BRICKER, WILLIAM. Acquisition of Receptive Vocabulary in the Toddler-Age Child. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 189-193. 14 young children who performed at criterion level in the comprehension mode on 10 word-object pairs were given 100 2-choice object problems in which the correct object (SD) was named on each trial. Half of these word-object problems were composed of unknown SDs paired with known distracters, and half were composed of unknown SDs paired with unknown distracters. Each of the pairs was presented 5 times. On the first presentation of each object pair, subjects performed near criterion when the distracter was known but performed at a chance level when the distracter was unknown. By the fifth presentation of all object pairs, subjects were performing correctly on nearly all problems. 30 additional problems were then administered, which indicated that the subjects had learned the name of the initially unknown SDs in the problems employing known distracters rather than simply choosing away from the known distracters.