Dec. 6, 2010 Exposure to more diverse objects speeds word
learning in tots Two toddlers are learning the word "cup." One
sees three nearly identical cups; the other sees a tea cup, a
sippy cup and a Styrofoam cup. Chances are, the second child
will have a better sense of what a cup is and -- according to a
new University of Iowa study -- may even have an advantage as he
learns new words. Published this month in Psychological Science,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the
research showed that 18-month-olds who played with a broader
array of objects named by shape – for example, groups of bowls
or buckets that were less similar in material, size or features
– learned new words twice as fast as those who played with more
similar objects. Outside the lab, one month after the training,
tots who had been exposed to the diverse objects were learning
an average of nearly 10 new words per week. Kids in the other
group were picking up four a week – typical for children that
age without any special