Children’s affective involvement in early word learning

Abstract

The current study set out to examine the underlying physiological mechanisms of and the emotional response associated with word learning success in young 3-year-old predominantly white children. In particular, we examined whether children’s physiological arousal following a word learning task predicts their word learning success and whether successful learning in turn predicts children’s subsequent positive emotions. We presented children (n = 50) with a cross-situational word learning task and measured their pupillary arousal following completion of the task, as well as changes to their upper body posture following completion of the task, as indices of children’s emotions following task completion. Children who showed greater physiological arousal following the novel word recognition task (n = 40) showed improved subsequent word recognition performance. We found that children showed more elevated posture after completing a familiar word learning task compared to completing a novel word learning task (n = 33) but results on children’s individual learning success and postural elevation were mixed. We discuss the findings with regards to children’s affective involvement in word learning.

Children’s subjective uncertainty-driven sampling behaviour

“…Thus, reflecting on one’s own uncertainty in the knowledge of word–object associations and using such judgements to strategically select uncertain objects to increase one’s knowledge might be more difficult for young children—at least relative to simpler perceptual or memory tasks. Indeed, recent work suggests that while children show more elevated body posture, indexing increased positive affect, after a familiar word-recognition task relative to a novel word-recognition task, there was no association between children’s performance in the novel word-recognition task and their posture [ 36 ]. In other words, individual differences in how successful children were in the word-recognition task did not explain differences in their positive affect after completing the task.…”

Models of human learning should capture the complexity of natural communication

“…Beyond just the cues that occur, infants' experience of communication happens within a system that is constantly changing (see Thelen & Smith, 1994 for a review). Factors including infants' internal states and features of the environment vary at multiple timescales and influence the way that communicative input is encountered and processed (Mani & Ackermann, 2018;Outters et al, 2023;Pomper & Saffran, 2019). As one example, recent evidence suggests that the presence or absence of highly salient familiar objects may influence infants' word learning.…”

“…While everyday activities in the home (e.g., mealtime, playtime, book sharing) are one commonly recognized type of nonlinguistic context in which infant learning occurs (e.g., Kosie & Lew-Williams, 2024;Tamis-LeMonda et al, 2019) there is no clear-cut definition for what does and does not count as "context". Emotional states, spatial locations, social and political systems, communities and neighborhoods, and cultural values and beliefs are all examples of how context arises in infants' everyday experiences (Custode & Tamis-LeMonda, 2020;Outters et al, 2023;Rowe & Weisleder, 2020;Roy et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2021). Context influences infants' experience in multiple ways: certain words are likely to occur in specific locations within the home (e.g., "bubbles" in the bathroom at bathtime or "bye" next to the front door; Custode & Tamis-LeMonda, 2020;Roy et al, 2015) and caregivers' use of multimodal cues tends to be similar from day to day within an activity context but not across different contexts (Kosie & Lew-Williams, 2024).…”

Natural dynamics of caregiver-child affect are linked to communication and children’s word knowledge

“…First, positively valenced or moderately high arousal states in adults have been shown to support semantic memory (Gilet & Jallais, 2011), and negative (vs. neutral) moods are associated with worse recall of familiar and novel words (Guo et al, 2018;Miller et al, 2018). In toddlers, physiological arousal following episodes of word learning is associated with more accurate memory (Outters et al, 2023). These findings hint toward the possibility that the child's affective states may dynamically shape learning throughout the day.…”

“…Children experience language in the context of activities, routines, feelings, and social interactions that change from one moment to the next. Affect is a particularly salient aspect of children's experiences that shapes (1) attention and memory (Guo et al, 2018;Miller et al, 2018;Outters et al, 2023), (2) communicative behavior (daSilva et al, 2021;Fields-Olivieri et al, 2020;Wass et al, 2022), and (3) contextual information (Andrews et al, 2009;). Yet, its natural fluctuations are nearly unexplored as a factor in language learning (Doan, 2010).…”