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Part of
Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn
Edited by Caroline F. Rowland, Anna L. Theakston, Ben Ambridge and Katherine E. Twomey
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 27] 2020
► pp. 189–219

Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications

| Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | The Australian National University |
| University of Salford
| The Australian National University
| University of Liverpool
| University of Liverpool
| Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | University of Liverpool | Radboud University

Much of Lieven’s pioneering work has helped move the study of individual differences to the centre of child language research. The goal of the present chapter is to illustrate how the study of individual differences provides crucial insights into the language acquisition process. In part one, we summarise some of the evidence showing how pervasive individual differences are across the whole of the language system; from gestures to morphosyntax. In part two, we describe three causal factors implicated in explaining individual differences, which, we argue, must be built into any theory of language acquisition (intrinsic differences in the neurocognitive learning mechanisms, the child’s communicative environment, and developmental cascades in which each new linguistic skill that the child has to acquire depends critically on the prior acquisition of foundational abilities). In part three, we present an example study on the role of the speed of linguistic processing on vocabulary development, which illustrates our approach to individual differences. The results show evidence of a changing relationship between lexical processing speed and vocabulary over developmental time, perhaps as a result of the changing nature of the structure of the lexicon. The study thus highlights the benefits of an individual differences approach in building, testing, and constraining theories of language acquisition.

Article outline
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • 1.Individual differences in language acquisition
  • 2.What causes individual differences in language acquisition?
    • 2.1Intrinsic differences in the neurocognitive learning mechanisms
    • 2.2The communicative environment (especially linguistic input)
    • 2.3The role of developmental cascades
  • 3.Case study: Individual differences in children’s early lexical processing efficiency
    • 3.1The LWL task and its relationship to lexical development
    • 3.2Psychometric modelling
    • 3.3Longitudinal analyses
  • 4.Future prospects
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 17 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.27.09kid
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