Abstract
Children acquire novel word-object pairs rapidly and with few exposures via fast-mapping (Carey & Bartlett, 1978). However, everyday environments contain background noise that interferes with children’s formation of phonological representations of words. Existing research has not consistently shown disruption of receptive word learning by background noise when implementing a closed-set, forced-choice paradigm. In contrast, Riley & McGregor (2012) found that background noise disrupted expressive word form representation. The present study extends this prior work by investigating the effects of background speech on expressive word learning in preschool-aged children. Three-to-four-year-old children performed a fast-mapping task in quiet and in the presence of two-talker speech presented at a + 2 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Children viewed short animations whereby novel objects were verbally labeled. Children were then tested on each novel label-object pair with a tiered expressive recall task (Gordon & McGregor, 2014). For each object, children were asked to verbally produce its novel label. If children were unable to name the object, they were prompted with the label-initial sound (e.g., cueing) or given a closed-set of potential labels from which to choose the correct one. This presentation will discuss how depth of expressive word learning can vary in quiet and noisy environments.
Published Version
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