Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021:61:199-221.
doi: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2021.04.003. Epub 2021 Jun 14.

Building theories of consistency and variability in children's language development: A large-scale data approach

Angeline Sin Mei Tsui  1 , Virginia A Marchman  2 , Michael C Frank  2
Affiliations
Review

Building theories of consistency and variability in children's language development: A large-scale data approach

Angeline Sin Mei Tsui et al. Adv Child Dev Behav. 2021.

Abstract

Young children typically begin learning words during their first 2 years of life. On the other hand, they also vary substantially in their language learning. Similarities and differences in language learning call for a quantitative theory that can predict and explain which aspects of early language are consistent and which are variable. However, current developmental research practices limit our ability to build such quantitative theories because of small sample sizes and challenges related to reproducibility and replicability. In this chapter, we suggest that three approaches-meta-analysis, multi-site collaborations, and secondary data aggregation-can together address some of the limitations of current research in the developmental area. We review the strengths and limitations of each approach and end by discussing the potential impacts of combining these three approaches.

Keywords: Large-scale datasets; Meta-analysis; Multisite studies; Replication; Theory-building.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Anderson CJ, Bahnik S, Barnett-Cowan M, Bosco FA, Chandler J, Chartier CR, et al. (2016). Response to comment on “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science”. Science, 351(6277), 1037. 10.1126/science.aad9163. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bates E, Dale PS, & Thal D (2014). Individual differences and their implications for theories of language development. In Fletcher P, & MacWhinney B (Eds.), The handbook of child language (pp. 95–151). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 10.1111/b.9780631203124.1996.00005.x. - DOI
    1. Bates E, & Goodman JC (1999). On the emergence of grammar from the lexicon. In MacWhinney B (Ed.), The emergence of language (pp. 29–79). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
    1. Bergelson E, & Swingley D (2012). At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(9), 3253–3258. 10.1073/pnas.1113380109. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bergmann C, & Cristia A (2016). Development of infants’ segmentation of words from native speech: A meta-analytic approach. Developmental Science, 19(6), 901–917. 10.1111/desc.12341. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources