Children’s performance was found to be influenced by the nature of input and the nature of
the lexicon as well as by other child based factors. The influence of the external environment
has been supported by Nelson’s interactive functional model which considers the
environment as one of the crucial factors for lexical acquisition. According to the model,
children Ieam new words by interacting with adults linguistically and поп-linguistically in
a variety of contexts. In those cases, the adult is a collaborator who supports inferences and
provides feedback.
Furthermore, the influence of the nature of the input is also consistent with Nelson’s (1993)
recent theoretical claim that a theory of lexical acquisition in discourse context is required
to explain word learning at all levels and for all word types. According to that theory, words
acquire meaning in discourse contexts.
This claim is also supported by research showing that pragmatic and grammatical contexts
enable a child to grasp the word’s use and eventually it’s meaning (Nelson’s Hampson’s and
Shaw’s, 1993; Nelson, 1988). Nelson’s claim is also supported by other studies showing the
important role of input for word learning. Evidence comes both from fast mapping studies
(Gottfried and Tonks, 1996; Au, 1990) and more naturalistic studies such as from listening
to stories (Robbins and Ehri, 1994; Senechal and Cornell, 1993; Leung and Pikulski, 1990;
Eller et al., 1988). The important role of the linguistic context is also supported by the
Sternberg’s and Powell’s (1983) theory of word learning from context. According to the
theory, contextual cues and mediating variables in the linguistic context influence the
likelihood that the meanings will be correctly inferred.
Additional, to these theories, other child based factors were identified as playing an important
role in lexical acquisition such as age, phonological memory and existing∕prior vocabulary
knowledge. The above finding is also consistent with other studies (Michas and Henry, 1994;
Robbins and Ehri, 1994; Gathercole and Baddeley, 1990). The finding that children’s
performance did vary by above developmental factors probably implies fundamental changes
occurring across the entire cognitive system. For example, older children have greater
knowledge and better processing capacities.