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Quantifying Semantic Linguistic Maturity in Children

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Author

Summary, in English

We propose a method to quantify semantic linguistic maturity (SELMA) based on a high dimensional semantic representation ofwords created from the co-occurrence of words in a large text corpus. The method was applied to oral narratives from 108 children aged 4;0–12;10. By comparing the SELMA measure with maturity ratings made by human raters we found that SELMA predicted the rating of semantic maturity made by human raters over and above the prediction made using a child’s age and number of words produced. We conclude that the semantic content of narratives changes in a predictable pattern with children’s age and argue that SELMA is a measure quantifying semantic linguistic maturity. The study opens up the possibility of using quantitative measures for studying the development of semantic representation in children’s narratives, and emphasizes the importance of word co-occurrences for understanding the development of meaning.

Publishing year

2016-10

Language

English

Pages

1183-1199

Publication/Series

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

Volume

45

Issue

5

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Psychology

Keywords

  • semantic development
  • semantic representation
  • narratives
  • semantic linguistic maturity
  • child language
  • psychology

Status

Published

Project

  • Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning

Research group

  • Lund University Cognitive Science (LUCS)
  • Division of Cognitive Psychology

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0090-6905