In gaining word knowledge, children’s semantic representations are initially imprecise before becoming gradually refined. We developed and tested a framework for a digital receptive vocabulary assessment that captured varied levels of representation as children learn words. At pre-test and post-test, children selected one of four images to match a word’s meaning: a correct target, a conceptually-related foil, a thematically-related foil, and a phonologically-similar foil. We expected that selecting a conceptually related foil would indicate that the word is understood at a deeper level than selecting a phonologically similar foil. Indeed, selection of phonological foils decreased from pre- to post-test, while selection of more advanced thematic and conceptual foils increased. These results demonstrate that this assessment tool probed semantic knowledge that might be characterized as intermediate word knowledge. The current paper presents a novel and sensitive way to capture the incremental process of word learning. Applications for vocabulary interventions are discussed.

中文翻译：

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对于学龄前儿童来说，单词知识是一个连续体：捕捉单词学习增量过程的新颖框架


在获得文字知识的过程中，儿童的语义表征最初是不精确的，然后逐渐精细化。我们开发并测试了一个数字接受词汇评估框架，该框架捕获了儿童学习单词时不同程度的表征。在测试前和测试后，孩子们从四个图像中选择一个来匹配单词的含义：正确的目标、概念相关的陪衬、主题相关的陪衬和语音相似的陪衬。我们预计，选择概念上相关的陪衬将表明该词比选择语音相似的陪衬能在更深层次上被理解。事实上，从测试前到测试后，语音陪衬的选择减少了，而更高级的主题和概念陪衬的选择增加了。这些结果表明，该评估工具探讨了可能被表征为中间单词知识的语义知识。当前的论文提出了一种新颖而敏感的方法来捕获单词学习的增量过程。讨论了词汇干预的应用。