Effects of context variability on 2-year-olds’ fact and word learning

Background context affects word‐object mapping

“…Two year olds participated ( N = 24, M = 2 years, 6 months; SD = 2 months; 12 female). A power analysis using Tippenhauer and Saylor's (2019) smallest effect (η p 2 = 0.08) confirmed over 80% power to detect similarly sized effects. Two additional children were excluded for caregiver interference.…”

“…For example, Vlach and Sandhofer (2011) found 2 year olds were less likely to map new words when items were presented against variable backgrounds. However, in other studies, 2 year olds exhibit word learning regardless of context variability (e.g., Tippenhauer & Saylor, 2019; Wojcik, 2017). Differences in context composition may explain these discrepant findings.…”

“…These context features vary in both relevance to word meaning and occurrence across labelling episodes. Label learning is sometimes affected by such variability (e.g., Goldenberg & Sandhofer, 2013; Vlach & Sandhofer, 2011), but sometimes not (e.g., Tippenhauer & Saylor, 2019; Wojcik, 2017). The present study explores one explanation for this discrepancy by testing whether contexts with nameable objects are more disruptive to word‐object mapping.…”

“…Studies finding evidence for context‐independent word learning presented novel objects on backgrounds that varied in colour or pattern (e.g., Tippenhauer & Saylor, 2019; Wojcik, 2017), while research demonstrating effects of context on word learning presented objects on contexts including familiar, nameable objects (e.g., Twomey et al, 2018; Vlach & Sandhofer, 2011; H. Vlach, personal communication, October 17, 2017). There is indirect evidence that backgrounds with nameable objects may disrupt learning (e.g., Axelsson & Horst, 2014; Horst et al, 2010; but see Zosh et al, 2013).…”

The differentiation of early word meanings from global to specific categories: Towards a verification of the “semantic pluripotency hypothesis”

“…Young children form label-meaning connections differently depending on the contextual background (Chen & Yu, 2017;Goldenberg & Sandhofer, 2013;Perry, Samuelson, & Burdinie, 2014;Twomey, Ma, & Westermann, 2018;Vlach & Sandhofer, 2011), and a similar phenomenon occurs for object categorization (Goldenberg & Johnson, 2015). For instance, unlike older children, 2.5-year-olds show lower performance on novel object word learning when the contextual background varies than when it is consistent from the learning to the test phase (Vlach & Sandhofer, 2011; but see Tippenhauer & Saylor, 2019). Relatedly, toddlers can form object categories based not only on similarities in shape or function but also on contextual spatiotemporal relations such as "kitchen-related objects" (Mandler, Fivush, & Reznick, 1987; see also Roy et al, 2015).…”