We compared short- and long-term retention of fast mapped color, shape, and texture words as well as object labels. In an exposure session, 354 3- and 4-year-old children were shown a set of two familiar and three novel stimuli. One of the novel stimuli was labeled with a new object label, color, shape, or texture word. Retention of the mapping between the new word and the novel object or property was measured either 5 min or 1 week later. After 5 min, retention was significantly above chance in all conditions. However, after 1 week, only the mappings for object labels were retained above chance levels. Our findings suggest that fast mapped object labels are retained long term better than color, shape, and texture words. The results also highlight the importance of comparing short- and long-term retention when studying children's word learning.

What helps children learn: is it a presence of a live teacher or an interaction with the learning materials? Addressing this question, we manipulated a teacher's presence (on-screen vs. present) and activity (observing vs. doing) while teaching children about the properties of geometric shapes. Five-year-olds (n=215) completed two shape-sorting tasks in which they distinguished between typical, atypical and nonvalid shapes. In between these tasks, they took part in one of four training sessions: doing teacher-present, observing teacher-present, doing teacher-on-screen and observing teacher-on-screen. Although children's shape knowledge improved across all training conditions, learning showed an interaction between teacher presence and task difficulty. In a teacher's presence, children learned more about the most difficult (atypical) shapes, irrespective of activity. It may be the social interaction, associated with a teacher's presence, that enhances learning. Conversely, physically taking part in interactive touchscreen training did not result in more learning than passive screen viewing.

To become skilled artifact users, children must learn the actions and functions associated with artifacts. We investigated preschoolers' ability to fast map an action, function and name associated with a novel artifact, and retain the new mapping long term following brief incidental exposure to the artifact being used. In Experiment 1, 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 144) were tested 1 week after two exposures to a novel action, function, and name. Participants performed well on comprehension tests of all three kinds of information. In Experiment 2, 3-year-olds (N = 100) were exposed to these three kinds of information only once. Retention of the action-artifact link was above chance levels, whereas retention of function and the name was not. Finally, in Experiment 3, 4-year-olds (N = 128) performed well on an action production task 1 week after brief exposure. In contrast, their performance on a name production task immediately after exposure was poor. Our data suggest that preschoolers can retain function information about a novel artifact from minimal exposure, similar to their ability to learn an artifact name. Crucially, their ability to remember action-artifact mappings is markedly better than their ability to remember functions and names.

There is an ongoing debate over the extent to which language development shares common processing mechanisms with other domains of learning. It is well-established that toddlers will systematically extend object labels to similarly shaped category exemplars (e.g., Markman and Hutchinson, 1984; Landau et al., 1988). However, previous research is inconclusive as to whether young children will similarly extend factual information about an object to other category members. We explicitly contrast facts varying in category relevance, and test for extension using two different tasks. Three- to four-year-olds (N = 61) were provided with one of three types of information about a single novel object: a category-relevant fact (‘it’s from a place called Modi’), a category-irrelevant fact (‘my uncle gave it to me’), or an object label (‘it’s called a Modi’). At test, children provided with the object name or category-relevant fact were significantly more likely to display systematic category extension than children who learnt the category-irrelevant fact. Our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that the mechanisms responsible for word learning may be domain-general in nature.