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Word comprehension and production asymmetries in children and adults
Lisa Gershkoff-Stowe1, Erin R Hahn
1Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. gershkof@indiana.edu
Abstract:
Two studies investigated differences in the comprehension and production of words in 2-year-old children and adults. Study 1 compared children's speaking and understanding of the names of 12 novel objects presented over three weekly sessions. Study 2 tested adults' performance under similar training and testing conditions over two sessions. The findings indicated a comprehension advantage for both age groups. A fine-grained temporal analysis of individual words revealed that acquisition does not resemble a linear stage-wise progression from comprehension to production. Rather, dimensions of lexical knowledge develop at different rates, with words acquired, lost, and maintained over the course of learning. The findings support a dynamic and graded view of lexical processing and have implications for understanding what it means to know a word.
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