Finding and Remembering Words

Although infant-directed speech is generally slower and has more exaggerated pitch contours than adult-directed speech (Fernald & Simon, 1984), the lack of clear boundaries between successive words is still present. Nevertheless, the word segmentation problem might not pose a serious difficulty for acquiring a vocabulary if new words were always presented to infants as isolated utterances. However, even when parents are explicitly instructed to teach their children new words, they present these words in isolation only about 20% of the time (Woodward & As lin, 1990). Consequently, to make real headway in acquiring a vo cabulary, learners need to solve the word segmentation problem.