Abstract
Communication with young children is often multimodal in nature, involving, for example, language and actions. The simultaneous presentation of information from both domains may boost language learning by highlighting the connection between an object and a word, owing to temporal overlap in the presentation of multimodal input. However, the overlap is not merely temporal but can also covary in the extent to which particular actions co-occur with particular words and objects, e.g. carers typically produce a hopping action when talking about rabbits and a snapping action for crocodiles. The frequency with which actions and words co-occurs in the presence of the referents of these words may also impact young children’s word learning. We, therefore, examined the extent to which consistency in the co-occurrence of particular actions and words impacted children’s learning of novel word–object associations. Children (18 months, 30 months and 36–48 months) and adults were presented with two novel objects and heard their novel labels while different actions were performed on these objects, such that the particular actions and word–object pairings always co-occurred (Consistent group) or varied across trials (Inconsistent group). At test, participants saw both objects and heard one of the labels to examine whether participants recognized the target object upon hearing its label. Growth curve models revealed that 18-month-olds did not learn words for objects in either condition, and 30-month-old and 36- to 48-month-old children learned words for objects only in the Consistent condition, in contrast to adults who learned words for objects independent of the actions presented. Thus, consistency in the multimodal input influenced word learning in early childhood but not in adulthood. In terms of a dynamic systems account of word learning, our study shows how multimodal learning settings interact with the child’s perceptual abilities to shape the learning experience.
Highlights
Communication with young children is often multimodal in nature, involving, for example, language and actions
Children (18 months, 30 months and 36–48 months) and adults were presented with two novel objects and heard their novel labels while different actions were performed on these objects, such that the particular actions and word– object pairings always co-occurred (Consistent group) or varied across trials (Inconsistent group)
How does a child determine what to focus on when confronted with simultaneous speech and action? Does information from one domain interfere with the processing in the other domain, or does cross-domain information foster processing on another domain? We examined these questions in the current study by investigating the extent to which consistency in the co-occurrence of particular actions and word–object pairings influenced children’s learning of the novel word–object associations: in a word learning task, two groups of 18, 30-month-old and 3- to 4-year-old children and adults saw two objects and heard their labels while the objects moved in either the same (Consistent group) or in a varied (Inconsistent group) manner across successive presentations of the word–object association
Summary
Communication with young children is often multimodal in nature, involving, for example, language and actions. We examined these questions in the current study by investigating the extent to which consistency in the co-occurrence of particular actions and word–object pairings influenced children’s learning of the novel word–object associations: in a word learning task, two groups of 18-, 30-month-old and 3- to 4-year-old children and adults saw two objects and heard their labels while the objects moved in either the same (Consistent group) or in a varied (Inconsistent group) manner across successive presentations of the word–object association. Werker et al [13] report that 14-month-olds learned the associations between words and their referents only when these objects were moving, but not when they were stationary These results suggest that concurrently presented actions foster word learning in young children, potentially due to such multimodal content highlighting the connection between the word and the object. Like the study by Matatyaho-Bullaro et al [1], these results suggest that the nature of the concurrently presented actions or, in this case, gestures, may influence young children’s word learning
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