Poster #119 - Trucks and Veggies: Shifting Typical and Late Talker Vocabularies by Minimally Changing Home Environments

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Children learn the words they hear and names of things in their environment (van Veen et al., 2009). Research further indicates a relationship between the words a child knows and the way they learn new words (Perry & Samuelson, 2011). However, this relationship is different for typically developing children and late talkers (Thomas & Knowland, 2014; Colunga & Sims, 2017). Teaching toddlers names of object categories organized by shape changes the way they learn words in the lab and increases their rate of acquisition of new words outside of the lab (Smith et al, 2002, Samuelson, 2002). In the current study we attempt to influence children’s vocabularies by giving families themed boxes of toys and books about vehicles (organized by shape) or foods (organized by material and shape).

Sixty-five children between 18-25 months of age were assigned to either the food, vehicle, or control condition. Twenty-four were considered later talkers, or those falling in the lower 20th percentile on productive vocabulary. During the enrichment phase, children received themed boxes containing commercially available food or vehicle toys and books, one at a time, every two weeks. Then, in a follow-up phase, we tracked children’s word learning and vocabulary composition (See Figure 1).

We investigated if minimally altering children’s home environments change the kinds of words they learn, and the way they learn new words. 2 (Word type) x 3 (Visit) x 2 (Talker type) x 2 (condition) Mixed Factor ANOVA’s controlling for initial age revealed that children learn more food words than vehicle words, and typically-developing children learn more words than late talkers. For typically developing children, those in the vehicle condition did learn more vehicle words than those in the food condition, though children in both conditions learned food words equally well. This holds true for words present in their boxes and words beyond. There were no effects of condition for late talkers. However, in a picture identification task at the last visit, both typical and late talkers perform better in the domain of their enrichment condition than the other.

A second analysis investigated children’s word learning biases during the follow up phase. A 2 (Solidity) x 3 (Visit) x 2 (Talker type) x 2 (Condition) Mixed Factor ANOVA revealed a four-way interaction. Overall, the shape bias for solids is more robust than the material bias for non-solids. For typical children, those in the food condition gain in shape bias more than children in the vehicle condition. The opposite is true for late talkers; those in the vehicle condition show a stronger shape bias than late talkers in the food condition.

Minimally altering a child’s environment may minimally alter their vocabulary and word learning biases, but this effect is different for late talkers and typically developing children. Whereas condition effects are seen for typical children, late talkers are likely to need a more focused intervention. Further, different domains of words may be more or less amenable to this sort of minimal intervention.

Authors

• Jennifer Weber, University of Colorado-Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Eliana Colunga, University of Colorado-Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author