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Category: Project

Description: The current project aims to examine word comprehension in 18-20-month-old Norwegian toddlers, by using a toddler-controlled task with touch-screen technology. Comprehension will be inferred by correct presses to one of two displayed items corresponding to an auditory target. First, we will assess the role of semantic relatedness on word recognition. Two conditions will be tested: In a semantically related condition, the two items will be related semantically (e.g., a dog (the target) and a horse (the distractor), which are both animals), whereas in a semantically unrelated condition, the two items will be unrelated semantically (e.g., a dog and a chair). Second, we will examine the role of familiarity on word comprehension with 1/3 of word pairs being commonly known by 18-20-month-old toddlers (80% and more as reported by Norwegian parents in wordbank.stanford.edu), 1/3 of words being known between 40 and 80% and 1/3 of word pairs being reportedly known by less than 40% of toddlers. Within each item pair, words are balanced in terms of their frequency in child-directed speech. Finally, we will examine whether word knowledge, as reported by parents, predicts infants' success in word recognition.