Factors Associated With Individual Differences in Vocabulary Acquisition

• In Event: 34.077 - Moving Toward a Multicomponent Model of Vocabulary Learning in School

Abstract

Purpose

Vocabulary knowledge is essential for oral language communication, literacy acquisition, and discourse-level language comprehension and production (Florit, Roch, & Loverato, 2011; Lepola et al., 2012). Vocabulary is also a strong predictor of reading comprehension (e.g., see National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000 and Elleman, Lindo, Morphy, & Compton, 2009) and writing (Olinghouse & Leaird, 2009). Given its importance, it is vital to have a clear understanding of factors involved in vocabulary acquisition.

Perspective

One well-known, critical factor for vocabulary acquisition is exposure frequency. Large standard deviations in previous vocabulary intervention studies (e.g., Biemiller & Boote, 2006; Coyne et al., 2010; Townsend & Collins, 2009) show that children with the same vocabulary exposure can vary substantially in vocabulary acquisition. A naturally rising question is what factors explain individual differences in vocabulary acquisition?

In the present study, this question was addressed by examining several predictors supported by previous research, including attentional control, working memory (phonological memory in particular), inference, and grammatical knowledge.

Attentional control. Learning, including vocabulary, occurs in real life contexts where multiple irrelevant stimuli compete for attention (Toro, Sinnett, & Soto-Faraco, 2011) and therefore individual differences in attention may predict vocabulary learning.

An aspect of working memory, phonological memory, is responsible for the encoding, maintenance, and manipulation of speech-based information (Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, & Baddeley, 1992). Phonological representation is necessary for lexical representation, making individual differences in phonological memory capacity a prime candidate for individual differences in vocabulary acquisition.

Inference. The majority of vocabulary learning occurs incidentally (Nagy, Herman & Anderson, 1985; Sternberg, 1987), making children’s ability to inference or use meaning cues surrounding an unknown word critical in deriving meaning from context.

Grammatical knowledge. Children’s ability to use syntactic cues and comprehend sentences may be a factor in vocabulary acquisition because establishing the meaning of an unknown word requires understanding of the word’s surrounding semantic context.

Data Sources and Methods

We examined how the vocabulary of 262 kindergartners (Mean age = 5.33), as measured by the Woodcock Johnson-III Picture Vocabulary is predicted by four variables: (a) working memory—a listening span task (Kim, 2016; Kim & Schatschneider, in press), (b) attentional control—SWAN (Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD symptoms and Normal behavior scale, Swanson et al., 2006), (c) grammatical knowledge—an adapted task from the Grammaticality Judgment task of CASL (Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999), and (d) inference—an adapted task from the CASL Inference task. Reliability estimates were greater than .70. The mean standard score of vocabulary for the sample was average (M = 99.40, SD = 9.29).

Results/Conclusions

A multiple regression analysis was conducted controlling for children’s age. As shown in Table 1-1, results showed that individual differences in attentional control, working memory, grammatical knowledge, and inference were all independently related to vocabulary.

Scientific/Scholarly Significance

These results suggest that individual differences in cognitive skills (e.g., attention, working memory, and inference) as well as oral language (grammatical knowledge) predict individual differences in vocabulary.

Author

• Young-Suk Kim, University of California - Irvine