While other research has associated word learning with some of these abilities, Bloom is the first to show how children need all of them to learn word meanings.
Children show some understanding of words before they start to speak.
Word learning usually begins at about 10 months of age. An average American high school graduate knows about 60,000 different words. In his book, Bloom explains the complex processes involved in word learning. His discussion is broad in scope, covering topics such as the effect of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, the emergence of number words and the young child's understanding of representational art. While children learn words by being exposed to contexts in which they can infer their meanings, Bloom said words do not need to be presentedwith their definitions.