How toddlers expand their vocabulary
If you watch a group of toddlers at play, you will notice big differences in how much they talk. One 2-year-old may be happily chatting away, but another barely opens their mouth, and that’s completely normal. But why do some toddlers find it much easier to learn words than others?
Hey, look at that wug!
In order to learn a new word (e.g. wug), you have to do a sequence of complex things. You have to listen to the word in a sentence (e.g. when dad says look at the wug running over there), work out what the sentence means (dad wants you to look at something over there that is running), figure out what thing to look at (the running wug), and then store that new word (wug) in your memory.
Keeping everything in mind
This whole process takes quite a long time, and during that time, you have keep the whole sentence active in your mind. If you forget what dad said half way through the process (e.g. before you have figured out what to look at), you won't learn the new word.
Bigger working memory? Bigger vocabulary!
In this study we found that some 2-year-olds were much better at this than others. The technical term is that these children have a bigger working memory capacity. We also found that children with a bigger working memory capacity knew more words overall.
The more you know, the more you learn
We discovered that the more words a child already knows, the better that child is at processing what is said to them (look at the wug running over there). And because of this, they are, in turn, faster at learning new words.
Virtuous circle of development
We call this a virtuous circle of development - the bigger your vocabulary of familiar words, the faster and easier you find it to learn new words, which in turn makes your vocabulary even bigger... and so on. This may also apply to learning a second language in school; if you work hard to build up a large vocabulary of words quickly, learning new words may get easier and easier as you go along.
