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Pals research uncovers some basic facts about how children learn abstract concepts

New research from Gabriella Vigliocco (EP), Courtenay Norbury (L&C) and Marta Ponari (University of Kent) uncovers some basic facts about how children learn abstract concepts

The research, supported by the Nuffield Foundation, shows that children learn most abstract words between the ages of 6-10 and that they start from learning those abstract words that have emotional association. Moreover, it also showed that children with atypical development (children with Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder) do not find abstract words especially difficult to learn. These results have important implications for primary school education.

The final report is available on the Institute for Multimodal Communication website.

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