Is 10 Better than 1? The Effect of Speaker Variability on Children’s Cross-Situational Word Learning

ABSTRACT

The current study examined the effect of speaker variability on children’s cross-situational word learning (XSWL). The study also examined the role of bilingual experience and sustained attention. Forty English monolingual children and 40 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 4–7 completed a XSWL task in a Single Speaker Condition and a Multiple Speaker Condition. Results indicated that speaker variability neither facilitated nor hindered XSWL. While monolingual children outperformed bilingual children, speaker-variability effects did not fluctuate across the two language groups. Notably, exposure to multiple speakers facilitated XSWL in children with poorer sustained attention skills, suggesting that variability in the input may be especially useful to children with poorer cognitive processing abilities.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by NIH grants R01 DC011750 awarded to Margarita Kaushanskaya and F31 DC019025 awarded to Kimberly Crespo. Support for the first author was also provided by a T32 Training Grant, T32 DC05359-13, “Interdisciplinary Research Training in Speech-Language Disorders” awarded to Susan Ellis Weismer.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [F31 DC019025,R01 DC011750,T32 DC05359-13].