Year: 2024
Type: preprint
Abstract: Studies of language learning often focus on how caregiver input shapes children’s language outcomes. In contrast, the role of children’s own production —especially errors— is often overlooked in theories of language development. Using irregular plurals (e.g., “mice”) as a test case, we conducted a corpus analysis (N = 227) and two pre-registered experiments (N = 56, N = 99), to investigate the potency of error-based learning as a mechanism for language acquisition in 3- and 4-year-old children. The results of the corpus analysis showed that incidental feedback after errors, in the form of caregivers’ reformulations of children’s errors, was relatively infrequent, had modest informational value, and was rarely used by children to correct their errors immediately. The following two experiments contrasted error-based learning with errorless learning, where the correct utterance was modeled for the child before a potential error was committed. The results showed that error-based learning was not always effective, and when it was, it was certainly not superior to errorless learning. Collectively, these findings raise doubts about the effectiveness of error-based learning mechanisms with incidental feedback for morpholexical learning in children, at least over short periods of time. They also highlight the role of child’s own production, especially errors, in the process of language acquisition, and invite a closer integration of children’s production into models of language development.
Authors: Megan Waller, Nazbanou Nozari, Daniel Yurovsky
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
Funder: James S. McDonnell Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4391569681