Between their second and fifth years, young children learn approximately 15 new words a day. For every word the child hears, he or she must choose the correct referent out of an infinite set of candidates. An important problem for developmental psychologists is to understand the principles that limit the child's hypotheses about word meanings. A…

Two children (ages four and five) with word-finding deficits characterized largely by semantic substitutions participated in a treatment involving phonological information about target words. Treatment resulted in reduction not only of occasional phonological word-finding substitutions but also of the large number of semantic word-finding…

This study with 12 2nd- and 3rd-grade students with mild disabilities compared memory for new reading words following instructional sessions in which either word meaning or phonic cues were emphasized. The phonic instruction resulted in a greater number of words remembered either within sentences or on word lists. (Author/DB)

Investigates the role of intraverbal learning (a process through which semantic knowledge is acquired from purely linguistic information) in preschool children's acquisition of semantic concepts. Shows that the relative effectiveness of pictorial and intraverbal information depends on the child's age, the type of information supplied, and the…

Ten- to thirteen-year-old children selected either the objectively more effective keyword method or the naturalistic context method for learning vocabulary meanings. Concludes that, even in the absence of explicit performance feedback, children can be induced to reflect on their use of strategies and their outcomes on subsequent cognitive actions.…

This article discusses word definitions within the context of language development in school-age children and adolescents. It explains the importance of the ability to define words, reviews the growth of word definition during school years, describes standardized tests, and offers suggestions for expanding the normative database for word…

A study investigated whether semantic feature analysis (SFA) significantly improves the content related vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of adolescent, learning disabled readers. SFA is a set of vocabulary development activities designed to help students categorize vocabulary words and compare related ideas. Subjects, 62 learning…