Aussems, Suzanne, Mumford, Katherine H. and Kita, Sotaro (2022) Prior experience with unlabeled actions facilitates 3-year-old children's verb learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151 (1). pp. 246-262. doi:10.1037/xge0001071 ISSN 0096-3445.

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Abstract

This study investigated what type of prior experience with unlabeled actions promotes 3-year-old children’s verb learning. We designed a novel verb learning task in which we manipulated prior experience with unlabeled actions and the gesture type children saw with this prior experience. Experiment 1 showed that children (N = 96) successfully generalized more novel verbs when they had prior experience with unlabeled exemplars of the referent actions (“relevant exemplars”), but only if the referent actions were highlighted with iconic gestures during prior experience. Experiment 2 showed that children (N = 48) successfully generalized more novel verbs when they had prior experience with one relevant exemplar and an iconic gesture than with two relevant exemplars (i.e., the same referent action performed by different actors) shown simultaneously. However, children also successfully generalized verbs above chance in the two-relevant-exemplars condition (without the help of iconic gesture). Overall, these findings suggest that prior experience with unlabeled actions is an important first step in children’s verb learning process, provided that children get a cue for focusing on the relevant information (i.e., actions) during prior experience so that they can create stable memory representations of the actions. Such stable action memory representations promote verb learning because they make the actions stand out when children later encounter labeled exemplars of the same actions. Adults can provide top-down cues (e.g., iconic gestures) and bottom-up cues (e.g., simultaneous exemplars) to focus children’s attention on actions; however, iconic gesture is more beneficial for successful verb learning than simultaneous exemplars.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology L Education > LB Theory and practice of education P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions:	Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Child psychology , Developmental psychology, Cognition in children, Children -- Language, Speech and gesture, Nonverbal communication in children, Language acquisition
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Publisher:	American Psychological Association
ISSN:	0096-3445
Official Date:	January 2022
Dates:	Date Event January 2022 Published 15 July 2021 Available 25 February 2021 Accepted
Volume:	151
Number:	1
Page Range:	pp. 246-262
DOI:	10.1037/xge0001071
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights):	© 2021, American Psychological Association. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: 10.1037/xge0001071
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Copyright Holders:	© 2021 American Psychological Association
Date of first compliant deposit:	9 March 2021
Date of first compliant Open Access:	10 March 2021
Related URLs:	Publisher

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