Work

Statistics learned are statistics forgotten: Children’s retention and retrieval of cross-situational word learning.

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: Children are able to resolve the referential ambiguity of learning new words by tracking co-occurrence probabilities across moments in time, a behavior termed cross-situational word learning (CSWL). Although we know that children can use co-occurrence data to map words to objects, the literature has a striking limitation: research has focused on encoding of language and, consequently, children's CSWL has only been assessed at an immediate test. The current research addressed this gap in the literature by examining whether children can retain and retrieve learned words after a retention interval, and whether children's age and individual cognitive abilities contribute to their CSWL performance. The results revealed that children were able to retain and retrieve co-occurrence statistics, but only reliably so at the end of early childhood. Moreover, children's visual recognition memory abilities and the timing of learning events were the two key factors that contributed to children's performance. These findings have implications for theories and computational models of CSWL, and suggest that more research is needed to understand the processes that support CSWL after encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition

DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000611

Authors: Haley A. Vlach, Catherine A. DeBrock

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Award: Developing the Ability to Retain and Retrieve Word Mappings Across Time