Age-of-acquisition, word frequency, and neighborhood density effects on spoken word recognition by children and adults

This study assessed how lexical factors associated with vocabulary growth i nfluence spoken word recognition by preschoolers, elementary-school childre n, and adults. Word frequency effects in gating and word repetition tasks w ere minimal, whereas age-of-acquisition and neighborhood density effects we re found for all listeners. For word repetition, children displayed more of an advantage for the recognition of early-acquired items from sparse vs de nse neighborhoods than did adults; adults showed a greater advantage for th e recognition of later-acquired items. Regression analyses revealed that th e recognition of early-acquired items from sparse neighborhoods contributed to phonological awareness among individual children. In turn, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, and verbal short-term memory contributed to word reading. These findings are discussed in terms of recent proposals about the level of processing at which neighborhood density exerts either f acilitatory or inhibitory effects, The development of phonological awarenes s and early reading skill is also discussed, (C) 2001 Academic Press.