Superordinate Word Knowledge Predicts Longitudinal Vocabulary Growth

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/c8wdt
• Publication Date: 2021-04-21T04:49:26Z
• Authors: Molly Lewis; Eliana Colunga; Gary Lupyan
• Keywords: Superordinate goals

Does knowing certain words help children learn other words? We hypothesized that knowledge of more general (more superordinate) at time-1 would lead to faster vocabulary growth as measured through checklists administered later timepoints. find this is indeed the case. Children who have similar vocabularies time-1, but differ in their productive such "animal", "picture", and "get" go on different rates word learning. Knowledge associated with growth, particularly semantically related superordinate terms they are reported produce. This positive relationship between learning remains even when controlling for measures verbal nonverbal intelligence.