Verifying One's Knowledge of a Name Without Retrieving It: A U-Shaped Relation to Vocabulary Size in Early Childhood

Abstract

An explicit awareness of gaps in one's vocabulary plays an important role in older children's word learning and reading comprehension and may influence language processing in younger children. The current investigation addressed how preschool-age children identify gaps in their knowledge of object labels. In two studies, preschoolers answered general questions about various depicted objects, then later judged whether they knew names for these and other objects. In each study, participants were more likely to mistakenly report knowing a name for an unnameable object if they had been asked questions about it, or similar objects, earlier in the session. This pre-exposure effect is evidence that cues other than name retrieval itself can influence children's name knowledge judgments. In 4½ year olds (Study 1), the pre-exposure effect was found only among those with smaller vocabularies, whereas in 3½ year olds (Study 2), it was found only among those with larger vocabularies. The reasons why the pre-exposure effect shows a U-shaped relation to vocabulary size are discussed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported in part by a faculty development grant from Ohio Dominican University. We wish to thank the children, parents, and staff at participating preschools around central Ohio for their enthusiastic involvement, and Kristin Bosc, Carlo Canella, Megan Cherry, Erin Foster, Gina Penhorwood, and Christina Riddle for their valuable assistance during various phases of the project. We are especially thankful for critical feedback from John Dunlosky, Katherine Rawson, and Maria Zaragoza.