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Nestor, Sarah

Communication Sciences

2009

MS

To build a vocabulary, infants must be able to segment words from continuous speech. This study investigated the correlation between infants' proficiency at word segmentation and related language competencies in toddlerhood. The word segmentation abilities of 36 individuals were tested in infancy and their language development was followed through 36 months. Previous evaluation of these data (Singh, in preparation, a) found that 24 month-olds with large expressive vocabularies had been more successful infant word segmenters as a group than 24 month-olds with smaller vocabularies. Reported here are the findings that these two groups continued to diverge in their language abilities at 36 months in vocabulary, mean length of utterance and syntax, measures which were correlated with performance on infant word segmentation tasks. The association between infant word segmentation and later language abilities highlights the role early language processing plays in functional communication outcomes.