The Role of Iconicity in Caregiver Speech in Supporting Children's Word Learning

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Language learning should be incredibly difficult—children must identify the referent of a new word from numerous possibilities and remember that word-referent association to use it later. Previous laboratory work has shown that one cue that facilitates children’s word learning is iconicity, or the resemblance between a word’s form and meaning. Furthermore, early-learned words, such as BUBBLES and BREAK tend to be higher in iconicity than later learned words, such as MENU and HATE; and adults tend to use more highly iconic words in their child-directed speech than in their speech to adults. Together, such findings have led some to propose that iconicity plays a causal role in language development such that iconicity in the early lexicon can facilitate children’s learning of both highly iconic words and eventually words with more arbitrary associations between sound and meaning. However, to date there is no direct evidence to support such a proposal. Here we investigate caregivers’ use of iconicity during naturalistic free-play with novel objects and ask whether that iconicity facilitates children’s learning of the arbitrary names of those objects.
Thirty-four 1.5-2.5-year-olds (half monolingual English learners and half bilingual English-Spanish learners) participated in a free-play task with their caregivers followed by a test of word-referent retention. During freeplay, caregivers were given two sets of three novel exemplars, one set at a time. They were not told that they needed to teach their child the names, but if they chose to name the objects, they should use the names listed on pictures velcroed to their side of the table. Caregiver speech was transcribed and coded for its iconicity. Iconicity was quantified using previously collected ratings of English and Spanish words (Perry et al., 2015, 2018; Winter et al., 2017). We calculated the average total iconicity per utterance, separately for utterances in which the caregiver named a novel object and for utterances in which they did not name a novel object.
Using linear mixed-effects regression models, we first explored individual differences in caregiver’s use of iconicity, finding a significant negative effect of children’s vocabulary size, B=-.004, se=.002, t=-1.99, p=.048, such that children with larger vocabularies received caregiver speech lower in iconicity than children with smaller vocabularies. There were no differences in the iconicity of English and Spanish words produced by caregivers, X2(1)=1.02, p=.312, suggesting similar use of iconicity in both languages. Using logistic mixed-effects regression models to predict children’s retention accuracy, we found that caregivers’ use of iconicity, particularly in utterances in which they named the novel object, was predicted the likelihood that children learned that novel name, B=.22, se=.10, t=2.19, p=.008. This result held even when controlling for other factors thought to be associated with children’s word learning, including vocabulary size, bilingualism, and the number of times the caregiver named the novel object. Together the results demonstrate that iconicity not only can serve to help children identify the referent of novel words (as in previous research), but can also support their ability to retain even arbitrary word-referent mappings.

Authors

• Lynn K Perry, University of Miami
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Custode, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Regina Fasano, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brittney Monique Gonzalez, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jordyn D. Savy, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author