Lexical and phonological effects in early word production.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

This study examines the influence of word frequency, phonological neighborhood density (PND), age of acquisition (AoA), and phonotactic probability on production variability and accuracy of known words by toddlers with no history of speech, hearing, or language disorders.

Method

Fifteen toddlers between 2;0 (years;months) and 2;5 produced monosyllabic target words varying in word frequency, PND, AoA, and phonotactic probability. Phonetic transcription was used to determine (a) whole-word variability and (b) proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP; Ingram, 2002) of each target word produced.

Results

Results show a significant effect of PND on PWP and variability (words from dense neighborhoods had higher PWP and lower variability than those from sparse neighbor

SUBMITTER: Sosa AV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3357200 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature