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The spacing effect is one of the most robust and replicable phenomena in psychological science, and holds promise for improving children's learning outcomes in educational settings. However, there is a striking limitation in the literature: very few studies have been conducted with young children (0–5-year-olds). Moreover, most studies examine children's learning on the group level, whereas early curricula typically focus on both group and individual outcomes. We predict that developmental and individual differences in visual attention, memory, prior knowledge, and metamemory will affect children's learning on massed and spaced schedules. Thus, we argue that the next critical step in research on the spacing effect is to develop a developmental and individual differences account. Indeed, this account will address limitations in theory and barriers in implementing the spacing effect in early educational settings.

Researchers have historically focused on characterizing vocabulary development in infants and toddlers. However, less is known about the vocabulary composition of children entering formal schooling. The authors propose that a critical next step in understanding school readiness is to characterize the academic vocabulary of children entering kindergarten. These assessments should identify knowledge of words used in general academic discourse and specific domains (e.g., science). This chapter outlines initial steps taken by the authors to identify children's science vocabulary around the age of school entry. Furthermore, the complexity of vocabulary assessment is illustrated via a discussion of vocabulary development in dual-language learners. Understanding the words that children can produce at various stages of development will help determine whether children are ready for school and inform interventions that target word knowledge. Indeed, focusing on children's vocabulary presents an exciting new opportunity to integrate developmental science with real-world educational settings.

Ambridge argues that there is widespread agreement among child language researchers that learners store linguistic abstractions. In this commentary the authors first argue that this assumption is incorrect; anti-representationalist/exemplar views are pervasive in theories of child language. Next, the authors outline what has been learned from this body of work, including insights into mechanisms underlying language learning. Interestingly, some of these mechanisms are at odds with counterarguments in Ambridge, such as the finding that forgetting is a critical process of language.

Science achievement gaps are a persistent social issue and are largely explained by individual differences in science knowledge before formal schooling. We were interested in whether children's science vocabulary relates to these differences in science knowledge. This experiment examined whether children's science vocabulary predicted their science knowledge above and beyond general vocabulary size and demographic variables. Children aged 3 to 11 years (N = 91; 59 boys) participated in-person at a laboratory within a large university in a mid-size city in the midwestern United States. The tasks that the children completed assessed general receptive vocabulary, science productive vocabulary, general science knowledge, and conceptions of science as a practice. We found that science vocabulary was the strongest predictor of science knowledge above and beyond other factors, indicating that science vocabulary production may predict individual differences in science knowledge specifically when achievement gaps emerge (β = .28). In addition, children who produced more of certain types of science words, such as size and physical property words, depicted more science equipment and language elements in their drawings of scientists. These findings suggest that learning new words may be related to conceptual development in science and that examining early science vocabulary is a key step toward fully understanding science knowledge gaps.

Work by Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky indicated a change in the spontaneous production of overt verbalization behaviors when comparing young children (age 5) with older children (age 10). Despite the critical role that this evidence of a change in verbalization behaviors plays in modern theories of cognitive development and working memory, there has been only one other published near replication of this work. In this Registered Replication Report, we relied on researchers from 17 labs who contributed their results to a larger and more comprehensive sample of children. We assessed memory performance and the presence or absence of verbalization behaviors of young children at different ages and determined that the original pattern of findings was largely upheld: Older children were more likely to verbalize, and their memory spans improved. We confirmed that 5- and 6-year-old children who verbalized recalled more than children who did not verbalize. However, unlike Flavell et al., substantial proportions of our 5- and 6-year-old samples overtly verbalized at least sometimes during the picture memory task. In addition, continuous increase in overt verbalization from 7 to 10 years old was not consistently evident in our samples. These robust findings should be weighed when considering theories of cognitive development, particularly theories concerning when verbal rehearsal emerges and relations between speech and memory.

Children’s early language knowledge—typically assessed using standardized word comprehension tests or through parental reports—has been positively linked to a variety of later outcomes, from reasoning tests to academic performance to income and health. To better understand the mechanisms behind these links, we examined whether knowledge of certain “seed words”—words with high inductive potential—is positively associated with inductive reasoning. This hypothesis stems from prior work on the effects of language on categorization suggesting that certain words may be important for helping people to deploy categorical hypotheses. Using a longitudinal design, we assessed 36 2- to 4-year-old children’s knowledge of 333 words of varying levels of generality (e.g., toy vs. pinwheel, number vs. five). We predicted that adjusting for overall vocabulary, knowledge of more general words (e.g., toy, number) would predict children’s performance on inductive reasoning tasks administered 6 months later (i.e., a subset of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales for Early Childhood–Fifth Edition [SB-5] and Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities [WJ] concept formation tasks). This prediction was confirmed for one of the measures of inductive reasoning (i.e., the SB-5 but not the WJ) and notably for the task considered to be less reliant on language. Although our experimental design demonstrates only a correlational relationship between seed word knowledge and inductive reasoning ability, our results are consistent with the possibility that early knowledge of certain seed words facilitates performance on putatively nonverbal reasoning tasks.

Children frequently apply a novel label to a novel object, a behavior known as the mutual exclusivity bias (MEB). This study examined how MEB affects children’s retention for word mappings. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 39; Mage = 46.62 months) and adults (N = 24; Mage = 21.63 years) completed an immediate word mapping task and a delayed retention test. Both samples used MEB during referent selection, but neither group displayed higher retention for words mapped via MEB than words mapped via other referent selection strategies at test. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with preschoolers (N = 85; Mage = 47.78 months) and provided evidence against the possibility that interference from multiple words contributed to children’s faster forgetting of word mappings when using MEB. Experiment 3 presented children (N = 30; Mage = 51.13 months) with an abbreviated version of the task, providing evidence against the alternative hypothesis that cognitive load during learning caused the forgetting observed in Experiments 1 and 2. Taken together, these experiments suggest that MEB supports initial word mapping but may not provide an advantage for long-term retention.

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of refutation texts on generating explanations and explore individual differences in quality of explanations. Seventy-five undergraduates read refutation and non-refutation texts addressing common scientific misconceptions and completed a two-tier post-test including True/False and open-ended questions. Readers' written post-test explanations were coded on accuracy and quality dimensions. The analysis of these explanations showed less circularity and uncertainty descriptors and more accuracy and causal connections in the refutation than the non-refutation condition. Further, three distinct clusters of readers emerged: coherence-building readers, non-coherence building readers, and promiscuous readers. Results demonstrate examining explanation characteristics can provide a useful tool for revealing how readers' knowledge influences learning from texts.

Learning new words is a difficult task. Children are able to resolve the ambiguity of the task and map words to referents by tracking co-occurrence probabilities across multiple moments in time, a behavior termed cross-situational word learning (CSWL). Although we observe developments in CSWL abilities across childhood, the cognitive processes that drive individual and developmental change have yet to be identified. This research tested a developmental systems account by examining whether multiple cognitive systems co-contribute to children’s CSWL. The results of two experiments revealed that multiple cognitive domains, such as memory and language abilities, are likely to drive the development of CSWL above and beyond children’s age. The results also revealed that memory abilities are likely to be particularly important above and beyond other cognitive abilities. These findings have implications for theories and computational models of CSWL, which typically do not account for individual children’s cognitive capacities or changes in cognitive capacities across time.

Prior research has investigated the relation between children's language and spatial cognition by assessing the quantity of children's spatial word production, with limited attention to the context in which children use such words. This study tested whether 4-year-olds children's (N = 41, primarily white middle class) adaptive use of task-relevant language across contexts predicted their spatial skills. Children were presented with a spatial scene description task, four spatial tasks, and vocabulary assessments. Children's adaptive use of task-relevant language was more predictive of their spatial skills than demographic and language factors (e.g., quantity of spatial words produced). These findings identify new links between language and spatial cognition and highlight the importance of understanding the quality, not just quantity, of children's language use.

Contains fulltext : 207229.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) There is substantial interest in the possibility that cognitive skills can be improved by dedicated behavioral training. Yet despite the large amount of work being conducted in this domain, there is not an explicit and widely agreed upon consensus around the best methodological practices. This document seeks to fill this gap. We start from the perspective that there are many types of studies that are important in this domain - e.g., feasibility, mechanistic, efficacy, and effectiveness. These studies have fundamentally different goals, and, as such, the best-practice methods to meet those goals will also differ. We thus make suggestions in topics ranging from the design and implementation of control groups, to reporting of results, to dissemination and communication, taking the perspective that the best practices are not necessarily uniform across all study types. We also explicitly recognize and discuss the fact that there are methodological issues around which we currently lack the theoretical and/or empirical foundation to determine best practices (e.g., as pertains to assessing participant expectations). For these, we suggest important routes forward, including greater interdisciplinary collaboration with individuals from domains that face related concerns. Our hope is that these recommendations will greatly increase the rate at which science in this domain advances. 28 p.

Adults modify the way they speak to children to support children’s learning across several domains. However, no previous research has studied whether adults change their language when explaining science to children. The current study examined if and how adults change the manner in which they talk about science when providing explanations to children vs. providing explanations to other adults. Participants (N = 81) were video recorded while explaining basic science concepts to children and adults. Recordings were later analyzed to determine if and how participants changed the quality and content of their explanations. The results confirmed that adults did change their explanations when talking to children about science by providing more potentially beneficial, but also disadvantageous, information. Participants perceived that they provided more accurate explanations to children, but appeared to be making metacognitive judgments largely based upon the changes made that could be beneficial to learning. Taken together, this work suggests that science may be a domain in which adults are not well equipped to modify and monitor their language to children.

The spacing effect is the robust finding that learners have stronger long-term memory for information presented on a spaced schedule, in which learning events are distributed across time, rather than a massed schedule, in which learning events are presented in immediate succession. Despite the fact that the spacing effect is highly replicable across tasks and timescales, most adults do not believe that spaced learning promotes memory. Instead, there is a persistent “massed bias”; adults believe that massed learning promotes memory to a greater degree than spaced learning. The developmental origins of the massed bias have yet to be studied; thus, the goals of the current research were to (a) identify a developmental period in which we do not observe a massed bias and (b) determine whether metamemory is related to the onset of the massed bias. The results revealed that children (aged 2–10 years; N = 109) do not have a persistent massed bias, and the number of massed endorsements increased across the early elementary school years. Children’s age predicted a massed bias, but individual differences in children’s metamemory abilities were not related to bias development when controlling for age. Taken together, this work suggests that researchers will need to reconceptualize dual-process theoretical accounts of metamemory and spaced learning to explain why and how children develop a massed bias.

Cross-situational word learning (XSWL) tasks present multiple words and candidate referents within a learning trial such that word-referent pairings can be inferred only across trials. Adults encode fine phonological detail when two words and candidate referents are presented in each learning trial (2 × 2 scenario; Escudero, Mulak, & Vlach, ). To test the relationship between XSWL task difficulty and phonological encoding, we examined XSWL of words differing by one vowel or consonant across degrees of within-learning trial ambiguity (1 × 1 to 4 × 4). Word identification was assessed alongside three distractors. Adults finely encoded words via XSWL: Learning occurred in all conditions, though accuracy decreased across the 1 × 1 to 3 × 3 conditions. Accuracy was highest for the 1 × 1 condition, suggesting fast-mapping is a stronger learning strategy here. Accuracy was higher for consonant than vowel set targets, and having more distractors from the same set mitigated identification of vowel set targets only, suggesting possible stronger encoding of consonants than vowels.

Distributing learning events in time promotes memory to a greater degree than massing learning together in immediate succession, a phenomenon known as the spacing effect. In this article, I review research on the spacing effect in children's acquisition and generalization of conceptual knowledge. For decades, researchers hypothesized that spaced learning should deter generalization because the forgetting that occurs between learning events limits children's ability to retrieve prior learning. However, new research suggests that spaced learning promotes children's generalization and implicates forgetting as the mechanism that supports, rather than deters, children's generalization. This work counters the intuitive assumption that forgetting uniformly constrains children's learning, suggesting instead that forgetting is a domain-general process that promotes cognitive development.

Summary: The spacing effect refers to the robust finding that long-term memory is promoted when learning events are distributed in time rather than massed in immediate succession. The current study extended research on the spacing effect by examining whether spaced learning schedules can simultaneously promote multiple forms of learning, such as memory and generalization, in the context of an educational intervention. Thirty-six early elementary school-aged children were presented with science lessons on one of three schedules: massed, clumped, and spaced. At a 1-week delayed test, children in the spaced condition demonstrated improvements in both memory and generalization, significantly outperforming children in the other conditions. However, there was no observed relationship between children’s memory performance and generalization performance. The current study highlights directions for future research and contributes to a growing body of work demonstrating the benefits of spaced learning for educational curriculum. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A long history of research on human memory has sought to identify the conditions of the learning environment that promote the ability to retain information. A central finding from this work is that the timing of learning events may be central in supporting memory. The most robust and highly replicable observed timing phenomenon is often termed the ‘spacing effect’ (dating back to Ebbinghaus, 1885/1964). The current study sought to extend research on the spacing effect by (i) grounding our investigation in an educational intervention in order to further bridge psychological science and educational practices and (ii) examining if and how spaced learning schedules simultaneously support multiple forms of learning, such as memory and generalization, within the context of an educational intervention.

Infants often hear new words in the context of more than one candidate referent. In cross-situational word learning (XSWL), word-object mappings are determined by tracking co-occurrences of words and candidate referents across multiple learning events. Research demonstrates that infants can learn words in XSWL paradigms, suggesting that it is a viable model of real-world word learning. However, these studies have all presented infants with words that have no or minimal phonological overlap (e.g., BLICKET and GAX). Words often contain some degree of phonological overlap, and it is unknown whether infants can simultaneously encode fine phonological detail while learning words via XSWL. We tested 12-, 15-, 17-, and 20-month-olds’ XSWL of eight words that, when paired, formed non-minimal pairs (e.g., BON–DEET) or minimal pairs (e.g., BON–TON, DEET–DIT). The results demonstrated that infants are able to learn word-object mappings and encode them with sufficient phonetic detail as to identify words in both non-minimal and minimal pair contexts. Thus, this work suggests that infants are able to simultaneously discriminate phonetic differences between words and map words to referents in an implicit learning paradigm such as XSWL.

A large literature has documented that comparison and contrast lead to better performance in a variety of tasks. However, studies of comparison and contrast present contradictory conclusions as to when and how these processes benefit learners. Across four studies, we examined how the specifics of the comparison and contrast task affect performance by systematically manipulating the feature variation and category structure in a category extension task performed by 3-year-old and 4-year-old children. Studies 1 (n = 48, M = 42.6 months) and 2 (n = 48, M = 42. 4 months) investigated comparison and contrast with high-density categories. Studies 3A (n = 60, M = 43.47 months), 3B (n = 48, M = 53. 2 months) and 4 (n = 48, M = 53.7 months) investigated comparison and contrast with low-density categories. Results indicated both category structure and feature variation affect the efficacy of comparison and contrast. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The spacing effect describes the robust finding that long-term learning is promoted when learning events are spaced out in time rather than presented in immediate succession. Studies of the spacing effect have focused on memory processes rather than for other types of learning, such as the acquisition and generalization of new concepts. In this study, early elementary school children (5- to 7-year-olds; N = 36) were presented with science lessons on 1 of 3 schedules: massed, clumped, and spaced. The results revealed that spacing lessons out in time resulted in higher generalization performance for both simple and complex concepts. Spaced learning schedules promote several types of learning, strengthening the implications of the spacing effect for educational practices and curriculum.

Due to the central role of categorization and generalization in cognition, a considerable amount of research has examined the factors that promote generalization. One particular factor that has been shown to facilitate generalization is the timing with which instances of a category are presented. The findings of this research present a paradoxical set of results—both presenting instances at the same time, providing an opportunity to compare instances simultaneously, and presenting instances apart in time, by spacing the presentation of instances out in time, have been shown to facilitate generalization. In this study, we examine these findings by investigating how simultaneous, massed, and spaced learning schedules affect children’s in-the-moment and long-term generalization. Moreover, we identify a mechanism, ease of retrieval during learning, which may contribute to differences in performance across time.

The spacing effect describes the robust phenomenon whereby memory is enhanced when learning events are distributed, instead of being presented in succession. We investigated the effect of spacing on children's memory and category induction. Three-year-old children were presented with two tasks, a memory task and a category induction task. In the memory task, identical instances of an object were presented and then tested in a multiple choice test. In the category induction task, different instances of a category were presented and tested in a multiple choice test. In both tasks, presenting the instances in a spaced sequence resulted in more learning than presenting the instances in a massed sequence, despite the difficulty created by the spaced sequence. The spaced sequence increased the difficulty of the task by allowing children time to forget the previous instance during the spaced interval.