Of course, the connection between storybook reading and vocabulary growth is not always a simple one.
Even in the earliest years caregivers use storybooks as a vehicle for pointing out new vocabulary ( Ninio, 1983 Moerk, 1985 Fletcher and Reese, 2005), but for 2- to 5-year-olds in a rapid period of word learning, storybook reading is the perfect opportunity to hear an abundance of new words in engaging contexts, and to take part in questions and conversations which promote vocabulary learning ( Ard and Beverly, 2004 Blewitt et al., 2009). Books present new words to young listeners, parents actively highlight those new words, expand on them, and help to make them memorable for the child (e.g., Clark, 2010). Shared storybook reading is a triangular interaction-the adult reader, the child, and the book conspire to create a meaningful experience each time a book is shared and one of the many benefits for young children who regularly share in storybooks with their parents is the positive impact that has on their vocabulary growth ( Senechal et al., 1996 DeTemple and Snow, 2003 Blewitt et al., 2009 Farrant and Zubrick, 2013). Recently, my 3-year-old son asked, “Guess what's in my pocket?” then paused for a beat and exclaimed, “a wocket!” And, while thankfully there was not actually a small Seussian monster in his pants, my son had reminded me of just how well he is able to learn words (even nonsense words) from storybooks, and in fact just how strongly rhyme must influence that process. Thus rhyme is not only facilitative for learning, but when the novel vocabulary is specifically in a position where it is predictable from the rhymes, it is most accessible. Additionally, when parents acted as the storybook readers in Experiment 2, many of them distinctly paused before target words in the predictive rhyme condition and for their children a stronger predictive rhyme advantage surfaced. In tests of retention and identification children showed greatest novel name learning in the predictive rhyme condition in both between-subjects (Experiment 1) and within-subjects (Experiment 2) comparisons. Two- to 4-year-old children heard rhyming stanzas naming novel monsters under three conditions: A non-rhyme condition in which novel monster names appeared as unrhymed elements within a rhymed stanza, a non-predictive rhyme condition in which the novel names were the rhymed element in the first line of a stanza, and a predictive rhyme condition in which the monster name came as the rhymed element in the last line of the stanza after a description of the features that distinguished him. In two experiments, we tested whether rhyme, when used to help children anticipate new words would make those words easier to learn. Rhyme, which is ubiquitous in the language experiences of young children, may be especially facilitative to vocabulary learning because of how it can support active predictions about upcoming words. Department of Psychology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA.
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