Two-year-olds consolidate verb meanings during a nap

He, Angela Xiaoxue; Huang, Shirley; Waxman, Sandra R.; Arunachalam, Sudha

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104205

Cited by 12 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…For instance, young adults who slept after learning a paired‐associates task showed superior memory compared to when they were awake for an equivalent period of time following learning (Payne et al, 2012; Plihal & Born, 1997; Wilson et al, 2012). Studies in children suggest that sleep, including napping, provides a similar benefit on memory at a young age (Desrochers, Kurdziel, & Spencer, 2016; He, Huang, Waxman, & Arunachalam, 2020; Sandoval, Leclerc, & Gómez, 2017; Spanò et al, 2018; Wilhelm, Metzkow‐Mészàros, Knapp, & Born, 2012; Williams & Horst, 2014). In one study, we taught preschool‐aged children (36–67 months) a visuospatial task in which they learned the spatial locations of items on a grid and subsequently recalled their locations (similar to the game “Memory”).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slow wave sleep in naps supports episodic memories in early childhood

Lokhandwala

Spencer

2020

Developmental Science

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Naps have been shown to benefit visuospatial learning in early childhood. This benefit has been associated with sleep spindles during the nap. However, whether young children's naps and their accompanying physiology benefit other forms of declarative learning is unknown. Using a novel storybook task, we found performance in children (N = 22, mean age = 51.23 months) was better following a nap compared to performance following an equivalent interval spent awake. Moreover, performance remained better the following day if a nap followed learning. Change in post‐nap performance was positively associated with the amount of time spent in slow wave sleep during the nap. This suggests that slow wave sleep in naps may support episodic memory consolidation in early childhood. Taken in conjunction with prior work, these results suggest that multiple features of brain physiology during naps may contribute to declarative memory processing in early childhood.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slow wave sleep in naps supports episodic memories in early childhood

Lokhandwala

Spencer

2020

Developmental Science

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“…Horst & Samuelson, 2008). It may be, however, that representations formed on the basis of syntactic information alone, as in the present study, are more robust; Yuan and Fisher (2009) found that novel verb representations that toddlers formed from dialogues withstood delays of one or two days (see also He, Waxman, & Arunachalam, 2017). If toddlers succeed in mapping the verb to meaning in either experiment, this manipulation allows us to see whether the representation is robust enough to withstand a delay.…”

Section: Research Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 51%

“…Importantly, although several studies show poor retention of new word meanings after even brief delays (e.g. Bion, Borovsky, & Fernald, ; Horst & Samuelson, ), there is evidence that toddlers hearing novel verbs in dialogues can retain their initial representations for these verbs over delays of a few hours (He et al., ), or even two days (Yuan & Fisher, ). It may be that representations that incorporate a syntactic frame are sufficiently robust to benefit from hearing multiple frames over a period of time including delays.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic detail in the developing verb lexicon: An extension of Naigles and Kako (1993)

Arunachalam

Dennis

2018

Developmental Science

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Verbs are often uttered before the events they describe. By 2 years of age, toddlers can learn from such an encounter. Hearing a novel verb in transitive sentences (e.g. The boy lorped the cat), even with no visual referent present, they later map it to a causative meaning (e.g. feed) (e.g. Yuan & Fisher, ). How much semantic detail does their verb representation include on this first, underinformative, encounter? Is the representation sparse, including only information for which they have evidence, or do toddlers make more specific guesses about the verb's meaning? In two experiments (N = 76, mean age 27 months), we address this using an event type studied by Naigles and Kako (); they found that when toddlers hear a novel transitive verb while simultaneously viewing a non-causative referent-a contact event such as patting-they map the verb to the contact event. In Experiment 1 we replicated this basic result. Further, toddlers' representations persisted over a 5-minute delay, manifesting again during a retest. In Experiment 2, toddlers heard the verbs while watching two actors converse instead of while seeing contact events. At test, they showed no evidence of mapping the verbs to contact events, either initially or after a 5-minute delay, despite that in prior work they mapped verbs to causative events under identical circumstances. We infer that on hearing a novel verb in a transitive frame, absent a relevant visual scene, toddlers posit a more specific representation than the evidence requires-one that incorporates causative semantics. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/aRCqSTbr6Bw.

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“…Sleep, however, was not manipulated—all children slept. A recent study (He, Huang, Waxman, & Arunachalam, 2020) conducted a similar verb‐learning experiment targeting children with similar age and explicitly manipulated sleep. Children took part in a two‐visit study: In the first visit, they learned new verbs and were then tested on their verb‐learning performance in an eye‐tracking paradigm; in the second visit, they received the same test as before.…”

Section: Sleep To Remember: Timing Of Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, more and more evidence for the benefit of sleep in early language development has emerged. Sleep has been shown to benefit memories and generalizations of new words (e.g., Friedrich, Wilhelm, Born, & Friederici, 2015;He, Huang, Waxman, & Arunachalam, 2020;Horváth, Liu, & Plunkett, 2016;Sandoval, Leclerc, & G omez, 2017;Williams & Horst, 2014), as well as abstraction of grammatical rules (e.g., G omez, Bootzin, & Nadel, 2006;Hupbach, G omez, Bootzin, & Nadel, 2009).…”

Section: Sleep To Remember: Timing Of Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimal input for language development: Tailor nurture to nature

2021

Infant and Child Development

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In acquiring a native language, the input children receive, to an unneglectable extent, shapes the rate of acquisition and the ultimate achievement. This in turn has cascading effects on many aspects of later development, including but not limited to language. Providing optimal input for early language development, therefore, is of major interest to scientists, parents, and educators. This thought paper highlights two less‐discussed factors in the formula of optimal input—the balance between input quantity and quality, and the timing of input provision. Correspondingly, two points are made: first, given significant limitations in processing abilities in early development, increased quality is sometimes achieved via decreased quantity; second, endowed with a sleep‐mediated memory consolidation system, input provision should consider “sleep” as a reference point in timing. Both points boil down to a central theme that nurture (i.e., input) should be tailored to suit nature; in particular, optimal input should take best advantage of the endowments provided by our nature (e.g., sleep to consolidate memory) and to circumvent the limitations set by nature (e.g., processing limitations).

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Two-year-olds consolidate verb meanings during a nap

Cited by 12 publications

References 50 publications

Slow wave sleep in naps supports episodic memories in early childhood

Slow wave sleep in naps supports episodic memories in early childhood

Semantic detail in the developing verb lexicon: An extension of Naigles and Kako (1993)

Optimal input for language development: Tailor nurture to nature

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