title: Dense neighborhoods and mechanisms of learning: evidence from children with phonological delay.
abstract: There is a noted advantage of dense neighborhoods in language acquisition, but the learning mechanism that drives the effect is not well understood. Two hypotheses--long-term auditory word priming and phonological working memory--have been advanced in the literature as viable accounts. These were evaluated in two treatment studies enrolling twelve children with phonological delay. Study 1 exposed children to dense neighbors versus non-neighbors before training sound production in evaluation of the priming hypothesis. Study 2 exposed children to the same stimuli after training sound production as a test of the phonological working memory hypothesis. Results showed that neighbors led to greater phonological generalization than non-neighbors, but only when presented prior to training production. There was little generalization and no differential effect of exposure to neighbors or non-neighbors after training production. Priming was thus supported as a possible mechanism of learning behind the dense neighborhood advantage in phonological acquisition.
authors.affiliation: Indiana University,USA.
authors.forename: Judith A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gierut
authors.affiliation: Indiana University,USA.
authors.forename: Michele L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Morrisette
mesh_terms: D001184:Articulation Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D007858:Learning; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010700:Phonetics; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D013060:Speech