Get the Picture: Learning Referents in a Single-Day Context

Associative learning provides a common substrate for studying learning and memory in language sciences. Studies on recognition memory tasks have found higher proportions of homonyms relative to non-homonyms, indicating a preference or optimum in word learning behavior. This study sought to identify the differences between associative learning for a new word form (pseudowords) and multiple referents (MR) as homonyms and single referents (SR) as non-homonyms. Encoding comprised stimuli for MR, SR, and another condition that comprised pseudowords alone (PW). After the learning phase, two tests were conducted for the participants to judge words from each condition (and an additional condition of untrained word forms), and pictorial referent figures. The results showed that proportions reflecting efficient learning favored SR over MR. The accuracy rates of the verbal working memory task were positively correlated with those of the SR condition in the first recognition task and for the MR condition across recognition tasks. These findings show that associative learning for pseudowords with an SR was more efficient than MR in a single-day learning context. Implications for future research on learning efficiency in vocabulary acquisition and multimedia learning are discussed.