{"pk":30116,"title":"Child-directed word associations reveal divergent semantic structure thatimproves models of early word learning","subtitle":null,"abstract":"How words are associated within the linguistic environment conveys semantic content, and it is well known that adultsspeak differently to children than to other adults. We present results from a new word association study in which adultparticipants are instructed to produce either unconstrained or child-directed responses to each cue, where cues included674 nouns, verbs, and adjectives from the McArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Child-directedresponses consisted of higher frequency words with fewer letters and earlier ages of acquisition. The correlations amongthe responses generated for each pair of cues differed between unconstrained and child-directed responses, suggestingthat child-directed associations imply different semantic structure. A comparison of growth models guided by semanticnetwork structure revealed that child-directed associations are more predictive of early lexical growth. Thus, these newchild-directed word association norms may provide more clear insight into the semantic context of young children.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Poster Session 3","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0521j84r","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Christopher","middle_name":"","last_name":"Cox","name_suffix":"","institution":"Louisiana State University","department":""},{"first_name":"Ashlyn","middle_name":"","last_name":"Suchand","name_suffix":"","institution":"Louisiana State University","department":""},{"first_name":"Eileen","middle_name":"","last_name":"Haebig","name_suffix":"","institution":"Louisiana State University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2020-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/30116/galley/19970/download/"}]}