AUTHOR=Marino Caterina , Gervain Judit TITLE=The Novelty Effect as a Predictor of Language Outcome JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=10 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00258 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00258 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

A controversial issue in the field of language acquisition is the extent to which general attentional or cognitive abilities play a role in individual differences in early language outcomes. Here we report a longitudinal study where we examined whether processing efficiency in a novelty detection task predicted later vocabulary size in a stable manner across time. We found that the novelty detection ability measured at 9 months was significantly predictive of later vocabulary size at 12, 14, 18, and 24 months. This study, therefore, emphasizes the importance of controlling for non-linguistic factors when assessing individual variability in language development. A more accurate assessment of language development may be obtained if general attentional and cognitive abilities are also taken into account in addition to linguistic factors.