Shape and the first hundred nouns

Reports evidence from a study in which children's attention to shape in a task of artificial noun learning was correlated with a rate shift in noun acquisitions. Eight children (median age 17 months) were tested at three-week intervals, beginning when they had less than 25 nouns in their productive vocabulary. The results indicate that as children learned nouns, they also learned to attend to shape in the novel word task. Children also showed an acceleration in new noun production outside of the task. * Gershkoff-Stowe, L and Smith, L B, Child Development 75 (4): 1098-1114, July 2004. Abstract: www.blackwell-synergy.com.