The developing role of prosody in novel word interpretation |
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Authors: | Herold Debora S Nygaard Lynne C Chicos Kelly A Namy Laura L |
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Affiliation: | a Department of Psychology, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA b Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA |
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Abstract: | This study examined whether children use prosodic correlates to word meaning when interpreting novel words. For example, do children infer that a word spoken in a deep, slow, loud voice refers to something larger than a word spoken in a high, fast, quiet voice? Participants were 4- and 5-year-olds who viewed picture pairs that varied along a single dimension (e.g., big vs. small flower) and heard a recorded voice asking them, for example, “Can you get the blicket one?” spoken with either meaningful or neutral prosody. The 4-year-olds failed to map prosodic cues to their corresponding meaning, whereas the 5-year-olds succeeded (Experiment 1). However, 4-year-olds successfully mapped prosodic cues to word meaning following a training phase that reinforced children’s attention to prosodic information (Experiment 2). These studies constitute the first empirical demonstration that young children are able to use prosody-to-meaning correlates as a cue to novel word interpretation. |
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Keywords: | Prosody Word learning Word meaning Tone of voice Spoken language Speech cues |
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