Abstract

Reading and listening to stories fosters vocabulary development. Studies of single word learning suggest that new words are more likely to be learned when both their oral and written forms are provided, compared with when only one form is given. This study explored children’s learning of phonological, orthographic, and semantic information about words encountered in a story context. A total of 71 children (8- and 9-year-olds) were exposed to a story containing novel words in one of three conditions: (a) listening, (b) reading, or (c) simultaneous listening and reading (“combined” condition). Half of the novel words were presented with a definition, and half were presented without a definition. Both phonological and orthographic learning were assessed through recognition tasks. Semantic learning was measured using three tasks assessing recognition of each word’s category, subcategory, and definition. Phonological learning was observed in all conditions, showing that phonological recoding supported the acquisition of phonological forms when children were not exposed to phonology (the reading condition). In contrast, children showed orthographic learning of the novel words only when they were exposed to orthographic forms, indicating that exposure to phonological forms alone did not prompt the establishment of orthographic representations. Semantic learning was greater in the combined condition than in the listening and reading conditions. The presence of the definition was associated with better performance on the semantic subcategory and definition posttests but not on the phonological, orthographic, or category posttests. Findings are discussed in relation to the lexical quality hypothesis and the availability of attentional resources.

Highlights

  • Vocabulary development starts during infancy and is a lifelong endeavor; children and adults acquire new words, and specify existing lexical representations, throughout the lifespan (Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987)

  • Oral language abilities were assessed using the British Picture Vocabulary Scale–Third Edition (BPVS; Dunn, Dunn, & National Foundation for Educational Research, 2009), a receptive vocabulary measure in which children need to choose the correct picture for a given word among four alternatives, and the Understanding of Spoken Paragraphs (USP) subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition (CELF-4; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2006), a test in which children listen to several short passages and answer questions about them

  • Nonword reading was assessed using the Phonemic Decoding Efficiency subtest of the Test of Word and Reading Efficiency (TOWRE; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999), in which children read as many nonwords as they can in 45 s, and word reading was assessed using the Single Word Reading Test (SWRT 6–16; Foster, 2007), which is an untimed word reading task with words in sets of increasing difficulty

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Summary

Introduction

Vocabulary development starts during infancy and is a lifelong endeavor; children and adults acquire new words, and specify existing lexical representations, throughout the lifespan (Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987). Oral language abilities were assessed using the British Picture Vocabulary Scale–Third Edition (BPVS; Dunn, Dunn, & National Foundation for Educational Research, 2009), a receptive vocabulary measure in which children need to choose the correct picture for a given word among four alternatives, and the Understanding of Spoken Paragraphs (USP) subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition (CELF-4; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2006), a test in which children listen to several short passages and answer questions about them This test assesses both oral language comprehension and sustained oral attention (test– retest reliability reported in the test manual = .80). They answer comprehension questions indexing knowledge of literal content and inferential processes (parallel form reliability reported in the test manual for reading accuracy: all rs > .70; Cronbach’s alpha for reading comprehension scores from two passages: all as > .70)

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