Modality effects and the development of the word length effect in children.
Two experiments investigated the development of the word length effect in children aged 4 to 10 years, comparing auditory and visual stimuli. The question addressed was whether word length effects emerged earlier with auditory presentation or visual presentation, or whether they emerged at the same age regardless of presentation modality. Results provided evidence that word length effects emerge earlier with visual than auditory presentation. The implication of our results is that with visual presentation, 4-year-olds engage in some form of verbalization strategy that involves obtaining phonological representations of picture names and mapping them on to articulatory output plans. This strategy is clearly verbal in nature, but is not necessarily characterised as cumulative verbal rehearsal.
Henry
L A
LA
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, London, U.K. spjtlah@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Turner
J E
JE
Smith
P T
PT
Leather
C
C
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012057:Reinforcement, Verbal