Get the Story Straight: Contextual Repetition Promotes Word Learning from Storybooks

Abstract

Although shared storybook reading is a common activity believed to improve the language skills of preschool children, how children learn new vocabulary from such experiences has been largely neglected in the literature. The current study systematically explores the effects of repeatedly reading the same storybooks on both young children's fast and slow mapping abilities. Specially created storybooks were read to 3-year-old children three times during the course of 1 week. Each of the nine storybooks contained two novel name–object pairs. At each session, children either heard three different stories with the same two novel name–object pairs or the same story three times. Importantly, all children heard each novel name the same number of times. Both immediate recall and retention were tested with a four-alternative forced-choice task with pictures of the novel objects. Children who heard the same stories repeatedly were very accurate on both the immediate recall and retention tasks. In contrast, children who heard different stories were only accurate on immediate recall during the last two sessions and failed to learn any of the new words. Overall, then, we found a dramatic increase in children's ability to both recall and retain novel name–object associations encountered during shared storybook reading when they heard the same stories multiple times in succession. Results are discussed in terms of contextual cueing effects observed in other cognitive domains.

Semantic–Syntactic Partial Word Knowledge Growth Through Reading

“…There is evidence that even very young TD children demonstrate such retention after shared book reading experiences, as reported by Horst et al (2011). QUIL studies of young children with SLI, on the other hand, suggest that there may be particular problems with retention, especially with verbs (Oetting, 1999;Rice et al, 1994).…”

“…There may be important differences, however, depending on the conditions in which the repetition occurs. In a study by Horst, Parsons, and Bryan (2011), 3-year-old children heard stories containing novel word-object pairs on three separate occasions over the course of a week. Half of the children were exposed to word-object pairs in the same stories, and the other half were exposed to the pairs in different stories.…”

Leitura compartilhada de livros e aprendizagem de palavras em crianças pré-escolares

“…O conjunto de dados aqui apresentados é compatível com os dados de outras pesquisas que utilizam a leitura de livros como forma de ensino de palavras para crianças pré-escolares e em idade escolar (e.g., Flores et al, 2014;Horst et al, 2011;Robbins & Ehri, 1994;Wilkinson & Houston-Price, 2013). Considerando que quatro crianças demonstraram aprendizagem de todas as palavras novas apresentadas nos dois livros nas sondas de emparelhamento, e que outras quatro crianças demonstraram esse desempenho em relação a todas as palavras de pelo menos um livro (ainda que a variável independente -apontar -não tenha se mostrado crítica no presente estudo), parece haver indícios fortes de que, a atividade de ler para crianças bastante jovens é uma situação propícia para a aprendizagem de vocabulário novo, dadas certas condições.…”

When the daffodat flew to the intergalactic zoo: Off-line consolidation is critical for word learning from stories.

“…Each time a familiar word is encountered activation spreads through this network, culminating in the activation of the word s meaning as well as activation of interrelated word meanings. Encountering a new word within a story in varying sentential contexts may therefore enable more immediate connections to be formed with related concepts (Carey, 8 1978;Carlo et al, 2004;Mol et al, 2009; although see Horst, Parsons & Bryan, 2011;Wilkinson & Houston-Price, 2013). This could work to strengthen the mapping between the new spoken word form and its meaning and in this way facilitate lexical integration.…”