title: Word comprehension and production asymmetries in children and adults.
abstract: Two studies investigated differences in the comprehension and production of words in 2-year-old children and adults. Study 1 compared children's speaking and understanding of the names of 12 novel objects presented over three weekly sessions. Study 2 tested adults' performance under similar training and testing conditions over two sessions. The findings indicated a comprehension advantage for both age groups. A fine-grained temporal analysis of individual words revealed that acquisition does not resemble a linear stage-wise progression from comprehension to production. Rather, dimensions of lexical knowledge develop at different rates, with words acquired, lost, and maintained over the course of learning. The findings support a dynamic and graded view of lexical processing and have implications for understanding what it means to know a word.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. gershkof@indiana.edu
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gershkoff-Stowe
authors.forename: Erin R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Hahn
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult