An examination of fast mapping skills in preschool children from families with low socioeconomic status

Abstract

Researchers consistently report that children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families have, on average, smaller vocabularies as assessed by measures of existing vocabulary knowledge than children from higher SES families. Yet, few studies have examined the word-learning process of children from low SES families. The present study was an examination of fast mapping by preschoolers from low SES families. The study also examined the relation between measures of existing vocabulary and performance on the fast mapping task. Forty-six preschoolers (mean age: 4;6, range: 3;11–5;3) from low SES families completed a part-term fast mapping task and two measures of existing vocabulary knowledge. On the fast mapping task, children demonstrated the use of three sources of information (familiar whole objects, possessive syntax and whole-part juxtaposition). Measures of existing vocabulary did not correlate with performance on the fast mapping task. Findings suggest that children from low SES families use multiple sources of information in linguistic input to learn words.

Keywords:

• word learning
• language development
• vocabulary

Acknowledgments

This study was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the first author's doctorate of philosophy degree at Vanderbilt University. Preliminary reports of this investigation were presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (2009), Head Start's Tenth National Research Conference (2010) and the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (2010).

This research was supported by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation through the Early Childhood Language Student Research Grant and the New Century Scholars Doctoral Scholarship awarded to the first author.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no declarations of interest.

Notes

1. The study did not specifically examine the effects of phonotactic probability, neighborhood density or word length on word learning, although evidence exists for their influence on word learning in children (Garlock, Walley, & Metsala, 2001; Storkel, 2001). The words that labeled whole objects and parts in FAMILIAR stimuli were real words that varied in phonotactic probability, neighborhood density and word length. The words that labeled whole objects and parts in NOVEL stimuli were novel words and were balanced for phonotactic probability, neighborhood density and word length across stimulus books. The 12 novel part-term-novel whole objects stimuli were composed of 24 single syllable words drawn from an investigation of phonotactic probability and neighborhood density (Storkel et al., 2006). The 12 pairs were of high phonotactic probability-high neighborhood density, high phonotactic probability-low neighborhood density, low phonotactic probability-high neighborhood density low phonotactic probability-low neighborhood density. One pair of each type was included in each of the three stimulus books.