Production facilitates lexical acquisition in young children

Abstract

Recent research in language acquisition argues that production plays a unique role in the acquisition of phonological and lexical representations [Fikkert. In press, LabPhonX]. In this research, we investigate the effect of production in early lexical acquisition. Twenty Dutch-learning children participated in a word-learning task, where children were taught and asked to imitate non-words. Children were then tested on their recall of the non-words, and their receptive knowledge of the non-words. Children’s performance on the two tasks was compared to whether they imitated the non-words during training, the number of times they imitated the non-words, and the accuracy of their imitations. While no effect of production during training was found on children’s receptive knowledge of the non-words, production during training was associated with children’s ability to recall the non-words. Specifically, children who produced the non-words during training were more likely to recall the non-words at test. No relationship was found between the number of times children produced the non-words during training, or the accuracy of their imitations. These results indicate that production enhances early lexical acquisition, and suggests a unique role for articulation in the formation of phonological and lexical representations.