Age-of-acquisition affects object recognition and compound word identification: Evidence from visual duration...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• The age of acquisition (AoA) effect shows childhood-acquired items are processed faster than adult-acquired ones.
• This effect is often attributed to the arbitrary mapping in lexical-semantic development.
• Previous research has not directly compared AoA effects in picture and word processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate and compare the age of acquisition (AoA) effect in both word and picture processing.
• To test the mapping theory by assessing AoA effects in visual duration threshold tasks (VDT) and progressive demasking tasks (PDT).
• To determine how semantic representation and perceptual-semantic connections influence the AoA effect.

Main Methods:

• 48 British English students participated.
• Tasks included a visual duration threshold task (VDT) with object images and four variations of progressive demasking tasks (PDT) with compound words.
• 150 compound words and corresponding object images were used.

Main Results:

• Early-acquired items were identified faster than late-acquired items across all tasks, confirming the AoA effect.
• The AoA effect was most pronounced in PDT with unspaced/spaced words, followed by VDT for pictures.
• The AoA effect was absent in PDT with component identification of unspaced words.

Conclusions:

• The AoA effect is rooted in semantic representation during word identification.
• Perceptual-semantic connections, as seen in VDT, also influence the AoA effect, supporting an integrated account.
• Findings highlight the interplay between semantic memory and perceptual processing in early language acquisition.