The role of interest in young children's retention of words

Abstract

Children fast‐map new words to their referents early on but may not show robust retention of the learning of word–object mappings until much later. This study examines whether children's interest in a natural category is associated with children's retention of newly learned labels for objects in that category. German‐speaking 24‐month‐olds and 38‐month‐olds (n = 88, 41 female) were trained on novel word–object associations from different categories. Pupillary arousal and parental reports served as indices of children's interest in categories presented. Recognition and retention were tested directly after exposure, 5 min later and 24 h later. Both younger and older children showed successful word–object recognition and retention. Furthermore, interest in the category modulates young children's recognition and retention of newly learned word–object associations from semantic categories across ages.

The quality of caregiver–child interaction is predicted by (caregivers’ perception of) their child’s interests

“…All caregiver–child dyads were recruited from a volunteer database of children managed by the laboratory, and mainly came from families living near and around the city where the university is based. Our rationale for studying children of this age group comes from our previous studies looking at children’s interests and word learning, where we also tested children of the same age group, and found an effect of children’s categorical interests on word-object mapping recognition [ 72 , 92 ]. Additionally, picture book shared-reading studies also often report many benefits of shared book reading for children under 3 years of age, including the acquisition of elaborated word meanings [ 93 ] and the capacity of symbolic re-enactment and representations [ 94 ].…”

“…every three trials), since given the fact that we had 15 trials in this task, including an attention grabber between each trial would have unnecessarily increased the duration of the task; which may have led to more children dropping out from the task. Prior studies on children’s interest have similarly used an attention grabber every few trials [ 8 , 92 ]. Since the ordering of objects was pseudo-randomized, this ensured that objects from specific categories rotated across the first and last trials of each block of three trials, thus ensuring that the attention grabber could not have systematically influenced the preferences reported.…”

Little scientists & social apprentices: Active word learning in dynamic social contexts using a transparent dyadic interaction platform

“…Children typically prioritize instructions and information from knowledgeable adults over uninformed individuals or peers (Kachel et al, 2021;Rakoczy et al, 2008), perceiving peer interactions as primarily social (Southgate et al, 2007;Zmyj et al, 2012). Mothers, being reliable informants, offer tailored information (Csibra & Gergely, 2009;Outters et al, 2020), aligning with children's interests (Ackermann et al, 2020(Ackermann et al, , 2023Madhavan & Mani, 2023). Maternal interactions foster neural synchrony, coordinating gestures and words, enhancing learning opportunities (Leong et al, 2017;Nguyen et al, 2022;Piazza et al, 2020).…”

The quality of caregiver-child interaction is predicted by (caregivers’ perception of) their child’s interests

“…All caregiver-child dyads were recruited from a volunteer database of children managed by the laboratory, and mainly came families living near and around the city where the university is based. Our rationale for studying children of this age group comes from our previous studies looking at children's interests and word learning, where we also tested children of the same age group, and found an effect of children's categorical interests on word-object mapping recognition (see Ackermann et al, 2023;Ackermann, Lo, et al, 2020). Additionally, picture book shared-reading studies also often report many benefits of shared book reading for children under three years of age, including the acquisition of elaborated word meanings (Blewitt et al, 2009) and the capacity of symbolic re-enactment and representations (Simcock & DeLoache, 2006).…”

“…We only included an attention-grabber every block (i.e., every three trials), since given the fact that we had 15 trials in this task, including an attention grabber between each trial would have unnecessarily increased the duration of the task; which may have led to more children dropping out from the task. Prior studies on children's interest have similarly used an attention grabber every few trials (Ackermann et al, 2020a(Ackermann et al, , 2023. Since the ordering of objects was pseudo-randomised, this ensured that objects from specific categories rotated across the first and last trials of each block of three trials, thus, ensuring that the attention grabber could not have systematically influenced the preferences reported.…”