A Study Of Chinese Preschoolers’ Ability Of Retaining Fast-Mapped Non-words

This thesis aims to investigate Chinese preschoolers’ ability to retain the fast-mapped non-words. Fast mapping refers to a process in which young children create a new lexical entry for a word, form some initial representations of the object, and set up an initial link between these representations. In the developmental psychology, as well as linguistics, fast mapping is usually considered as an important mechanism of children’s learning words at an early age. It is argued that infants’ ability of fast mapping plays a crucial role in the rapid increase of vocabulary at around18months. But the research on fast mapping in Chinese children is very little. In this experiment, the participants were62children divided into three age groups (i.e.,3-,4-and5-year-olds). To investigate the influence of time on children’s learning novel words, two timescales were designed:immediate test and a5-min delay test. Additionally, there were two modes of presentation:picture presentation and story presentation. The purpose was to investigate the impact of the input on children’s retention of non-words. The results are:a) the children across age retained most of the fast-mapped non-words in the immediate trials in the two modes of presentation. And in the story stimuli condition children’s retention of non-words was boosted (only for the3-year-old children). b) Children’s correct association of the non-word with its referent declined dramatically in the5-min retention tests in both modes. This indicates that time has a strong influence on children’s leaning of a novel word. c) Overall, there were significantly differences between the three age groups under different circumstances. The results suggest that Chinese preschoolers have the ability of fast mapping a novel word with its referent; and memory is an important factor affecting children’s learning of words.