Sublexical Influences on Lexical Development in Children

Previous experimental research has found that adults and infants are sensitive to the likelihood of occurrence of sequences of segments, or probabilistic phonotactics, in the ambient language. One hypothesis that emerges from this finding is that probabilistic phonotactics, a sublexical factor, may influence rate of lexical acquisition. Preliminary results are reported from a study involving 21 typically developing preschool children. Children participated in a multi-trial word learning task involving eight nonwords of varying phonotactic probability. Each nonword was paired with a picture of an unusual object having no apparent corresponding label in English. Referent and item identification tasks were used to monitor lexical acquisition during learning and retention trials. Results indicated that high probability nonwords were learned with fewer exposures than low probability nonwords across both test measures. This finding suggests that sublexical representations influence lexical development in children.