Online Lexical Competition During Spoken Word Recognition and Word Learning in Children and Adults

Lexical competition that occurs as speech unfolds is a hallmark of adult oral language comprehension crucial to rapid incremental speech processing. This study used pause detection to examine whether lexical competition operates similarly at 7-8years and tested variables that influence online lexical activity in adults. Children (n=20) and adults (n=17) were slower to detect pauses in familiar words with later uniqueness points. Faster latencies were obtained for words with late uniqueness points in constraining compared with neutral sentences; no such effect was observed for early unique words. Following exposure to novel competitors (biscal), children (n=18) and adults (n=18) showed competition for existing words with early uniqueness points (biscuit) after 24hr. Thus, online lexical competition effects are remarkably similar across development.