Does the Presence of Semantic Head Facilitate Novel Word Learning in Mandarin-Speaking Children?

Purpose

Characteristics of to-be-learned words influence word learning but are understudied in Mandarin-speaking children. The current study comprehensively investigated the effect of semantic head on word learning and examined the predictive role of verbal working memory and compound awareness.

Method

Fifty-nine children (Mage = 63.10 months) learned pseudo-disyllabic words with semantic head (WH words) and without semantic head (OH words). Learning was measured by four tasks (i.e., mispronunciation detection, referent identification, naming, and definition) immediately after training and by naming and definition tasks 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month after training.

Results

Better learning outcomes for WH words than OH words were only observed in forming phonological representations. Significant differences were not observed between WH and OH words at all three posttraining intervals. Substitution errors in naming WH words increased 1 month after training compared to earlier time points, suggesting an interference from the OH counterparts during offline consolidation. Compound awareness contributed to children's word-learning performance after accounting for the role of verbal working memory.

Conclusions

The availability of semantic head may have alleviated the processing demands of WH words initially. However, this facilitation did not persist into the retention stage. WH words were more susceptible to interference during offline consolidation, resulting in significant forgetting over longer term retention. The absence of a semantic head in OH words may have rendered them more distinctive, requiring increased cognitive effort and deeper processing and thereby resulting in relatively robust retention. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33049889.