The recognition of foreign words at first exposure in early language development: The role of phonological similarity

When learning new words in their native language, children take advantage of their existing knowledge about semantic (Tomasello, Mannle & Werdenschlag, 1988) and phonological properties (Newman, Samuelson & Gupta, 2008). When faced with a new, foreign langauge, children may similarly apply their existing native language knowledge to begin to recognize words. We examine the influence of similarity on the phonological level, as previous evidence has shown that preschoolers can use phonological similarity with their native language to recognize words in a foreign language (Von Holzen, Fennell, & Mani, 2019), which may support second language learning in young children, as well as the influence of child age and target word position in the utterance.

Von Holzen, K. & Newman, R. (2021, April). The recognition of foreign words at first exposure in early language development: The role of phonological similarity. Presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Virtual Conference.