‘Captivating’ Address: Enhancing Language with Vivid Vocabulary

By ANI | Updated: May 17, 2021 23:11 IST

Researchers at the University of Miami have discovered that children tend to learn words that are highly iconic earlier in development than those that are lower in iconicity. Iconicity refers to the resemblance between how a word sounds and what it means. In their study, Associate Professor Lynn Perry and doctoral student in psychology, Stephanie Custode also found that parents tend to use more iconic words when speaking to children than they do when speaking to other adults. This led them to investigate whether iconicity plays a causal role in children’s language development.

The researchers explored whether parents’ use of iconic words whilst playing with novel objects with their children between the ages of 1 and 2 helped them to learn the objects’ names. The objects were unique toys and foods given invented names such as “blicket” to describe a clay toy with a made-up shape. The findings of the study revealed that parents who used highly iconic words as they named a novel object were more likely to have their children remember those novel names later, regardless of whether the parents were speaking English or Spanish.

The researchers concluded that iconicity could act as an important cue that parents and other caregivers can use to facilitate word learning for children. The plan is now to investigate whether using more iconic words can help children experiencing language delays learn new words and whether parents reduce their use of iconic language as they recognise that their child is becoming a stronger word learner.