Children's difficulty in learning homonyms
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20366998 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin J Doherty (0000-0002-4314-7892, University of Stirling, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 203-214 |
| Publication date | 2004-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Child Language (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0305-0009 • E-ISSN: 1469-7602 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s030500090300583x |
| PMID | 15053090 |
| OpenAlex | W2124286146 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
| References cited | 8 |
Mazzocco (1997) claimed that children have persistent difficulty in learning pseudo-homonyms – words like rope used to refer to a novel object (e.g. spade). Because the novel objects were familiar, the pseudo-homonyms in her study were also synonyms (i.e. rope and spade both now mean spade). The results could therefore be due to children's well-known difficulties in learning synonyms. In Experiment 1, 55 six- to ten-year-olds used story context to select referents for pseudo-homonyms from picture sets containing the intended referents, with primary referents amongst the distractors. Children were equally poor when the intended referents were familiar (e.g. spade) as when they were unfamiliar (e.g. tapir) – 35 and 38% correct, respectively. This indicates that familiarity of referent does not account for children's difficulties. In Experiment 2, 64 five- to ten-year-olds received instruction about homonymy, then a story set without pictures of the primary referents, in order to make the experimenter's intentions clear. Children were then shown one of the story sets from Experiment 1. Performance was just as poor (38% correct), indicating that misunderstanding of task demands did not account for failure. The conclusion is that Mazzocco's findings represent a psychologically interesting developmental difficulty
Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Linguistics · Referent · Child and Animal Learning Development · Language Development and Disorders · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development
Homophone auditory processing in cross-linguistic perspective
A comparison of homonym and novel word learning
Semantic meaning and pragmatic interpretation in 5-year-olds
Learning homophones in context
Cognitive control and parsing
Children’s Knowledge of Multiple Word Meanings
Word Learning
Issues of Generalization From Unreliable or Unrepresentative Stimuli
Repetition, but Not Acoustic Differentiation, Facilitates Pseudohomophone Learning by Children
Semantisches Bewusstsein bei Vorschulkindern
Lexical inference training for homonyms
Current issues in neo-Gricean pragmatics
Measuring knowledge of multiple word meanings in children with English as a first and an additional language and the relationship to reading comprehension
Cascading activation across levels of representation in children's lexical processing
Do Chinese- and English-speaking preschoolers think differently about language
The relation between ambiguity understanding and metalinguistic discussion of joking riddles in good and poor comprehenders
Interpretation and Recall of Proverbs in Three School-age Populations
Promoting morphological awareness in Hebrew-speaking grade-schoolers
When does semantic change lead to semantic loss
Get the Picture
Token Frequency Effects in Homophone Production
How Individual Differences Affect Learning of Translation-Ambiguous Vocabulary
Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words
The Mutual Exclusivity Bias in Children's Word Learning
Developmental changes in indicators that literal interpretations of homonyms are associated with conflict
Children's interpretations of homonyms
Children's understanding of homonyms
The influence of linguistic context on young children's understanding of homophonic words
Children's understanding of homonymy
A partial solution to the homonym problem
| Citations per year | 1.05 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2026 (22) |
| Highly cited | No |