Abstract
Previous research has shown that sound symbolism facilitates action label learning when the test trial used to assess learning immediately followed the training trial in which the (novel) verb was taught. The current study investigated whether sound symbolism benefits verb learning in the long term. Forty-nine children were taught either sound-symbolically matching or mismatching pairs made up of a novel verb and an action video. The following day, the children were asked whether a verb can be used for a scene shown in a video. They were tested with four videos for each word they had been taught. The four videos differed as to whether they contained the same or different actions and actors as in the training video: (1) same-action, same-actor; (2) same-action, different-actor; (3) different-action, same-actor; and (4) different-action, different-actor. The results showed that sound symbolism significantly improved the childrens’ ability to encode the semantic representation of the novel verb and correctly generalise it to a new event the following day. A control experiment ruled out the possibility that children were generalising to the “same-action, different-actor” video because they did not recognize the actor change due to the memory decay. Nineteen children were presented with the stimulus videos that had also been shown to children in the sound symbolic match condition in Experiment 1, but this time the videos were not labeled. In the test session the following day, the experimenter tested the children’s recognition memory for the videos. The results indicated that the children could detect the actor change from the original training video a day later. The results of the main experiment and the control experiment support the idea that a motivated (iconic) link between form and meaning facilitates the symbolic development in children. The current study, along with recent related studies, provided further evidence for an iconic advantage in symbol development in the domain of verb learning. A motivated form-meaning relationship can help children learn new words and store them long term in the mental lexicon.
Highlights
Word learning presents certain challenges to children
The current study further investigated whether the facilitative effect is long lasting, i.e., whether children are better in identifying the meaning of a novel verb and in retaining it when the word contains sound symbolism
In order to test whether sound symbolism improved their performance, the proportions of the trials with correct responses were entered into a 2 × 4 Repeated Measures ANOVA
Summary
Word learning presents certain challenges to children. In order to learn new words children must identify the referent of the word in a complex reality. The current study used a delayed test to investigate the stability of lexical representation after fast mapping (e.g., Childers and Tomasello 2002; McGregor et al 2009) It investigated whether sound symbolism can help three-year-old children retain the semantic representation of a novel verb after a one-day delay. In the testing phase, the children were shown a sound-symbolically matching action in the different-action, same-actor trial; that is, they were asked whether the word batobato can refer to a different but sound-symbolically matching action (see Figure 1b). Creeping-type walk with medium sized steps, with arms bent and held closely in front of body phase, the children were shown a sound-symbolically matching action in the different-action, sameactor trial; that is, they were asked whether the word batobato can refer to a different but soundsymbolically matching action (see Figure 1b).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
