Child-directed word associations reveal divergent semantic structure that improves models of early word learning.

How words are associated within the linguistic environment conveys semantic content, and it is well known that adultsspeak differently to children than to other adults. We present results from a new word association study in which adultparticipants are instructed to produce either unconstrained or child-directed responses to each cue, where cues included674 nouns, verbs, and adjectives from the McArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Child-directedresponses consisted of higher frequency words with fewer letters and earlier ages of acquisition. The correlations amongthe responses generated for each pair of cues differed between unconstrained and child-directed responses, suggestingthat child-directed associations imply different semantic structure. A comparison of growth models guided by semanticnetwork structure revealed that child-directed associations are more predictive of early lexical growth. Thus, these newchild-directed word association norms may provide more clear insight into the semantic context of young children.