Many studies show that, when children learn new content words, they can utilize the appropriate types and appropriate amount of linguistic information. However, no existing study has examined what factors influence children to select the appropriate types and appropriate amount of linguistic information. In this study, we reviewed previous research on how children learn content words that are appropriate for their linguistic context. Through our review of the literature, we found three factors—validity, frequency, and redundancy—that influence how children select linguistic information. Based on these three factors, we further introduced studies that highlight the effectiveness of linguistic information on function word learning to understand how children learn function words, and how the factors affect function word learning in children. Existing studies also report that linguistic information is involved in function word learning. The three factors also affected the selection of their linguistic information. However, the extent that validity, frequency, and redundancy affected content words varied. In particular, linguistic information with a high validity is effective for learning content words, but not for learning function words.
