Children and adults benefit from a new word’s phonological neighbours during explicit vocabulary instruction, suggesting that related prior knowledge supports learning across development. This study examined lexical neighbourhood structure during …
Guest speaker at the *Language, Learning, & Cognition Lab* meeting, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Within education, the *Matthew effect* describes how the “rich get richer” in literacy skills. We focused on this effect in vocabulary, and asked how existing vocabulary knowledge might support memory for new words.
A book at bedtime provides opportunities for language learning. Our recent study suggests that learning new words before sleep might help us to remember them.
Why do some children excel at vocabulary learning while others get left behind? We’ve been thinking about how new word learning builds upon vocabulary we already have.
Ongoing; ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship research
2014--2019: PhD research with Dr Lisa Henderson and Prof. Gareth Gaskell
The relative contributions of different learning mechanisms may change across the lifespan.
For different stories, vocabulary enhanced consolidation of explicit knowledge. For repetitive stories, vocabulary had no positive impact on explicit learning.
Different neural mechanisms may support word learning in children and adults.