mauve; it’s a kind of purple”). The children were tested on their interpretation of the
novel word immediately following its introduction. The measurements used were a
generalization task, co-hyponym task, colour identification task and relations task.
Four- and five-year-old children interpreted the novel word as a shape term when
ostensive information was provided but as a colour term when additional information,
either contrastive or inclusive, specified a relation between the novel term and a known
label for that colour. Additionally, children who consistently interpreted the novel word
as a colour word tended to treat the novel and known labels as mutually exclusive colour
terms if they heard contrastive information, whereas they tended to treat the words as
hierarchically related if they heard inclusion information. Three-year-olds generally did
not make use of either type of information in determining the semantic domain of the
novel word or the relation between the terms.
The importance of input for word learning was shown in all the previous studies.
Nevertheless, the previous studies are characterised by an artificial type of exposure to
the novel words (e.g, isolated sentences, single assessments). In the next section, a review
of studies using a different mode of presentation of the input, such as stories, follows.
3.2.2 Evidence from listening to stories
Reading stories to preschool children has been recognised, by many researchers, as
beneficial to the development of their literacy skills (Clark 1984; Wells, 1986). The
longitudinal data from Wells’ study (1986) showed that listening to stories at preschool
age was positively related to teachers’ assessments of vocabulary size at age ten. A lot of
research has also concentrated on primary school children, and whether they can acquire
specific new vocabulary terms from reading. Only a handful of researchers have looked
at whether preschool age children can acquire new lexical items from listening to story
readings (Eller, Pappas & Brown, 1988; Elley 1989; Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Senechal &
Cornell, 1993; Leung & Pikulski, 1990).
Eller, Pappas & Brown (1988) designed a study to explore the process of incidental
vocabulary learning. Two illustrated storybooks were used, written by Brian Wildsmith.
These were “The Owl and the Woodpecker” and “The Lazy Bear”. Twenty target lexical
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