title: Measuring the vocabulary spurt: a reply to Mervis & Bertrand.
abstract: We reply to Mervis & Bertrand's report of three children (aged 1;6-1;8 at the start of the study) who evidenced a 'late' vocabulary spurt. Differences in assessing productive vocabulary, and the questionable inference that size of the lexicon is a reliable indicator of the vocabulary spurt, make it inappropriate to compare these children to previous studies that directly measure change in rate of word learning. Further work using continuous records of lexical development and controls for repeated cognitive assessments is needed to test hypotheses about the spurt and related cognitive and linguistic achievements.
authors: Department of Psychology, Rhode Island College, Providence 02908, USA.
authors: B A
authors: BA
authors: Goldfield
authors: J S
authors: JS
authors: Reznick
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary