The effect of word position and prosody in a word learning task: a study on school-age children

The effect of word position and prosody in a word learning task: a study on school-age children

Piera Filippi 1, 2 and Sabine Laaha 2

1. Vrije Universiteit Brussel

2. University of Vienna

In this study, we investigated how word position and pitch enhancement favor language learning in school-age children. 8-9 year-old participants (n = 56) viewed photographs belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing an utterance containing a target word. In the control condition, all words had the same pitch and, across trials, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance. The only cue to word-meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of target words and referents. This cue was present in all conditions. In condition 2, the target word was varied systematically within each utterance across trials, and was sounded at a pitch interval typical of infant-directed speech (IDS). In condition 3, the target word always occurred at the end of the utterance, and was sounded at the same fundamental frequency as all the other words of the utterance. In condition 4, the target word always occurred at the end of the utterance, and was sounded at a pitch interval typical of IDS. We found that learning performance was higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence only for condition 4. We conclude that, for school-age children, the combination of recency effects and pitch enhancement facilitates word learning.