The role of input frequency in lexical acquisition

ABSTRACT The influence of frequency of occurrence in input upon early lexical acquisition was examined within an experimental paradigm. Twelve children (1; 0·21 to 1; 3·15) were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each involving a nonsense word and four referents, over ten experimental sessions. Within each concept two exemplars were presented frequently and two were presented infrequently. Overall the children named more frequently presented exemplars than infrequently presented exemplars. However, when the absolute number of presentations was held constant, distributed (infrequent) presentations led to greater acquisition than massed (frequent) presentations.