Research project Learning First Words (L3WO)

The purpose of this project is to experimentally test the impact of hyperarticulation in infant-directed speech, that is, exaggerated articulation, on three core components of infant word acquisition, that is, learning a novel word.

The three components are

• word-recognition, that is, recognizing and understanding the meaning of a word
• word-segmentation, that is, extracting words from a continuous speech stream
• word-learning, that is, learning to associate a word with an object or action.

The project outcomes both contribute to the knowledge about the language learning process, and can be used in a wide range of other research fields, such as communication technology, early education and speech and language pathology.