ORCID
- Caroline Floccia: 0000-0003-3931-9791
Abstract
Investigating how infants first establish relationships between words is a necessary step towards understanding how an interconnected network of semantic relationships develops in the adult lexical-semantic system. Stimuli selection for these child studies is critical since words must be both familiar and highly imageable. However, there has been a reliance on adult word association norms to inform stimuli selection in English infant studies to date, as no resource currently exists for child-specific word associations. We present three experiments that explore the strength of word–word relationships in 3-year-olds. Experiment 1 collected children’s word associations (WA) (N = 150; female = 84, L1 = British English) and compared them to adult associative norms (Moss & Older, 1996; Nelson et al., 2004 (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3), 402–407)). Experiment 2 replicated WAs from Experiment 1 in an online adaptation of the task (N = 24: 13 female, L1 = British English). Both experiments indicated a high proportion of child-specific WAs not represented in adult norms (Moss & Older, 1996; Nelson et al., 2004 (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3), 402–407)). Experiment 3 tested noun–noun WAs from these responses in an online semantic priming study (N = 40: 19 female, L1 = British English) and found that association type modulated priming (F(2.57, 100.1) = 13.13, p <. 0001, generalized η2 =.19). This research presents a resource of child-specific imageable noun–noun word pair stimuli suitable for testing young children in word recognition and semantic priming studies.
DOI
10.3758/s13428-024-02414-3
Publication Date
2024-06-11
Publication Title
Behavior Research Methods
Volume
56
Issue
7
ISSN
1554-351X
Keywords
Associative, Child, Language development, Semantic meaning, Stimuli resource, Taxonomic, Word associations, Vocabulary, Humans, Language Development, Child, Preschool, Male, Association, Semantics, Female, Adult
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
First Page
7168
Last Page
7218
Recommended Citation
Fitzpatrick, N., & Floccia, C. (2024) 'Comparing child word associations to adult associative norms: Evidence for child-specific associations with a strong priming effect in 3-year-olds', Behavior Research Methods, 56(7), pp. 7168-7218. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02414-3
