Facilitatory Effects of Multi-Word Units in Lexical Processing and Word Learning: A Computational Investigation.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies have suggested that children and adults form cognitive representations of co-occurring word sequences. We propose (1) that the formation of such multi-word unit (MWU) representations precedes and facilitates the formation of single-word representations in children and thus benefits word learning, and (2) that MWU representations facilitate adult word recognition and thus benefit lexical processing. Using a modified version of an existing computational model (McCauley and Christiansen, 2014), we extract MWUs from a corpus of child-directed speech (CDS) and a corpus of conversations among adults. We then correlate the number of MWUs within which each word appears with (1) age of first production and (2) adult reaction times on a word recognition task. In doing so, we take ca

SUBMITTER: Grimm R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5390038 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature