Early lexical acquisition and the vocabulary spurt: a response to Goldfield & Reznick

Vocabulary development of three children (aged 1;6-1;8 at the start of the study) who had not begun to evidence a vocabulary spurt even though their productive vocabularies already included well over 50 words was followed to determine if these children eventually would have a vocabulary spurt. All three children evidenced a spurt, beginning at a mean productive vocabulary size of 112 words. The vocabulary spurt occurred at about the same time as the children first demonstrated the ability to sort objects exhaustively and to fast map new object names. Results are discussed in the context of Goldfield & Reznick's (1990; Reznick & Goldfield, 1992) argument that a substantial proportion of children never evidence a vocabulary spurt.