Early Comprehension of Nouns and Verbs (2009 - Present)

Investigator:  Beverly Goldfield, Rhode Island College
Mentor:  J. Steven Reznick, University of North Carolina

Abstract:  Children's productive vocabularies suggest that words that label objects (nouns) are easier to learn than words that label actions (verbs). Are words that label actions also more difficult to comprehend? This project consists of two studies that examine young children's comprehension of nouns and verbs. The aim of Study 1 is to examine comprehension of nouns vs verbs in cross-sectional samples of chidren at 14, 16, and 18 mos using two measures, a vocabulary checklist completed by parents and a lab assessment using the preferential looking task (PLT). For the PLT assessment, 32 children at each age are randomly assigned to the noun or the verb condition. In the noun condition, children view images of two different objects (e.g., truck and fish) for 6 sec before (baseline) and for 6 sec after (test) one of the images is labeled. In the verb condition, children view videorecordings of actors performing two different actions (e.g., walk and kick) before and after one action is labeled. Comprehension is defined as an increase in looking at the labeled image during the test trial. We predict that (1) children at each age will comprehend verbs and nouns, and (2) at each age, parent report will more accurately reflect children's comprehension of nouns than it does their comprehension of verbs. The aim of study 2 is to examine children's ability to learn a new verb at 14, 16, and 18 mos. During a naturalistic play session, children will be shown a novel action on a toy that is labeled with a novel word. A second, distracter action is presented but not labeled. 32 children at each age will be randomly assigned to hear 3 vs. 7 repetitions of the novel verb. The PLT will be used to assess comprehension of the novel verb by comparing visual gaze to videorecordings of the target and distracter actions before and after the action is labeled with the novel verb. Additional trials of the PLT assess children's ability to generalize comprehension of the novel verb to similar target actions performed on a different toy. We predict: (1) at each age, children will comprehend the novel verb, (2) at earlier ages (14 and 16 mos) comprehension will be successful at 7 but not 3 repetitions, and (3) at the later age (18 mos), comprehension will be successful at both 3 and 7 repetitions.