Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.

Previous studies have shown that verbal working memory and vocabulary acquisition are linked in early childhood. However, it is unclear whether acquisition of a narrow range of words during toddlerhood may be particularly related to recall of the same words later in life. Here we asked whether vocab...

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Main Authors: Melissa E Libertus, Peter B Marschik, Christa Einspieler
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098573
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author Melissa E Libertus
Peter B Marschik
Christa Einspieler
author_facet Melissa E Libertus
Peter B Marschik
Christa Einspieler
author_sort Melissa E Libertus
collection DOAJ
description Previous studies have shown that verbal working memory and vocabulary acquisition are linked in early childhood. However, it is unclear whether acquisition of a narrow range of words during toddlerhood may be particularly related to recall of the same words later in life. Here we asked whether vocabulary acquisition of number words, location and quantifier terms over the first three years of life are associated with verbal and visuospatial working memory at seven years. Our results demonstrate that children who produced more number words between 20-26 months and started to produce the number words 1-10 earlier showed greater number recall at 7 years of age. This link was specific to numbers and neither extended to quantifier and location terms nor verbal and visuospatial working memory performance with other stimuli. These findings suggest a category-specific link between the mental lexicon of number words and working memory for numbers at an early age.
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spelling doaj-art-e66f9628bdf3499f88e57689aa96f2cf2025-08-20T02:22:41ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032014-01-0196e9857310.1371/journal.pone.0098573Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.Melissa E LibertusPeter B MarschikChrista EinspielerPrevious studies have shown that verbal working memory and vocabulary acquisition are linked in early childhood. However, it is unclear whether acquisition of a narrow range of words during toddlerhood may be particularly related to recall of the same words later in life. Here we asked whether vocabulary acquisition of number words, location and quantifier terms over the first three years of life are associated with verbal and visuospatial working memory at seven years. Our results demonstrate that children who produced more number words between 20-26 months and started to produce the number words 1-10 earlier showed greater number recall at 7 years of age. This link was specific to numbers and neither extended to quantifier and location terms nor verbal and visuospatial working memory performance with other stimuli. These findings suggest a category-specific link between the mental lexicon of number words and working memory for numbers at an early age.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098573
spellingShingle Melissa E Libertus
Peter B Marschik
Christa Einspieler
Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.
PLoS ONE
title Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.
title_full Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.
title_fullStr Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.
title_full_unstemmed Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.
title_short Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.
title_sort number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age
url https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098573
work_keys_str_mv AT melissaelibertus numberworduseintoddlerhoodisassociatedwithnumberrecallperformanceatsevenyearsofage
AT peterbmarschik numberworduseintoddlerhoodisassociatedwithnumberrecallperformanceatsevenyearsofage
AT christaeinspieler numberworduseintoddlerhoodisassociatedwithnumberrecallperformanceatsevenyearsofage