For preschoolers, word knowledge falls on a continuum: A novel framework for capturing the incremental process of word learning.

In gaining word knowledge, children's semantic representations are initially imprecise before becoming gradually refined. We developed and tested a framework for a digital receptive vocabulary assessment that captured varied levels of representation as children learn words. At pre-test and post-test, children selected one of four images to match a word's meaning: a correct target, a conceptually-related foil, a thematically-related foil, and a phonologically-similar foil.

Becoming word meaning experts: Infants' processing of familiar words in the context of typical and atypical exemplars.

How do infants become word meaning experts? This registered report investigated the structure of infants' early lexical representations by manipulating the typicality of exemplars from familiar animal categories. 14- to 18-month-old infants (N = 84; 51 female; M = 15.7 months; race/ethnicity: 64% White, 8% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% Black, and 23% multiple categories; participating 2022-2023) were tested on their ability to recognize typical and atypical category exemplars after hearing familiar basic-level category labels.

A Framework for Online Experimenter-Moderated Looking-Time Studies Assessing Infants' Linguistic Knowledge.

Online data collection methods pose unique challenges and opportunities for infant researchers. Looking-time measures require relative timing precision to link eye-gaze behavior to stimulus presentation, particularly for tasks that require visual stimuli to be temporally linked to auditory stimuli, which may be disrupted when studies are delivered online. Concurrently, by widening potential geographic recruitment areas, online data collection may also provide an opportunity to diversify participant samples that are not possible given in-lab data collection.