Executive Functions and Early Word Learning/Language Development

Previous research into language acquisition has shown that children acquire nouns more rapidly than they acquire verbs (Gentler, 1982). Nouns, which tend to refer to concrete objects are fundamentally different from verbs, which tend to refer to conceptually complicated, ephemeral actions like 'jumping' and 'thinking' (Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2008), or functional relationships between objects (e.g. 'throwing' might refer to a relationship between a 'hand' and a 'ball'). Evidence suggests that young children may possess biases which lead them to focus on perceptual features of word-referents (e.g. the shape), rather than on important relational-information (Merriman et al., 1993), explaining why nouns - which can be easily identified on the basis of their perceptual features, are acquired more rapidly in early childhood than verbs (McDonough et al., 2011). I would like to investigate how biases occurring in early word-learning are related to executive functions, such as inhibitory control. To what extent might control over inhibitory responses (such as attending to the important relational features of a word-referent rather than the perceptual features) help a child to acquire language more rapidly? I would aim to recruit adult controls and child participants aged between 2-5 years-of-age from Birmingham schools - many of whom I have developed a working relationship with from my time spent on placement with the Birmingham Educational Psychology Service (EPS). Inhibitory control and executive function could be assessed using standardised neuropsychological tests (e.g. the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function - Adult and Preschool version). A correlation could be explored between executive function scores and the ability to generalise novel words according to perceptual or relational information. This research would further our understanding of biases in child language acquisition, executive functions, and the possible relationship between them.