Development of Word Definition Skill in Children: A Review

In linguistic studies, the word definition task is used for surveying organization of concepts in the mental lexicon. The aim of the present study was to review the literature related to the developmental processing of concepts and organization of them using word definition task.
Published articles on the subject of the development of word’s definition in children were surveyed using the folowing keywords: word definition, definitional skills, and children within the timeframe of 1965-2014. Databases of ScienceDirect, Springer, GoogleScholar, Elsevier, PubMed, ASHA, and related Iranian studies were used.
In the word definition task, the children were asked to define words. The answers expressed in this task are scored based on content and form. Age, literacy, and meta linguistic awareness are effective factors at presenting the best kind of definition. As the age increases, noun definitions are developed from functional and concrete responses into more abstract and conceptual responses, and also using superordinate terms increases. Increased use of super ordinate terms in definitions indicates that by increasing the age, concepts are organized into hierarchies of connections and superordinates have connection with subordinates.