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

J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2019 Apr;45(4):700-711. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000611. Epub 2018 Jul 16.

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).

MeSH terms

  • Age Factors
  • Child Development / physiology*
  • Child, Preschool
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Recall / physiology*
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Probability Learning*
  • Retention, Psychology / physiology*
  • Verbal Learning / physiology*