The roles of feedback and working memory in children’s reference production

Wardlow, Liane; Heyman, Gail D.

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2016.05.016

Cited by 19 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Therefore, maintaining a "particular" model of the listener, as opposed to a more "generic" one seems to be associated with additional costs. This analysis is consistent with findings showing that children with better cognitive skills (e.g., executive functioning, working memory, mentalizing skills) are also better communicators (e.g., Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Nilsen et al, 2015;Resches & P erez Pereira, 2007;Wardlow & Heyman, 2016).…”

Section: Audience Design In Children and Adultssupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Furthermore, children may produce utterances that are underinformative for listeners because of limitations in cognitive abilities such as working memory and inhibition, or mentalizing skills such as Theory of Mind (Allen, Skarabela, & Hughes, 2008;Bannard et al, 2017;Brown-Schmidt, 2009;Epley, Morewedge, & Keysar, 2004;Nilsen & Fecica, 2011;Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Nilsen, Varghese, Xu, & Fecica, 2015;Wardlow & Heyman, 2016). In support of this possibility, informative language use in children during reference disambiguation tasks is associated with increased ability to explicitly report what each conversational partner knows (Roberts & Patterson, 1983), better performance on independent Theory of Mind tasks (Resches & P erez Pereira, 2007), and stronger working memory (e.g., Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Nilsen et al, 2015;Wardlow & Heyman, 2016). At present, however, it is not clear whether standardized, global measures of cognitive skills are the best predictor of the entire range of children's pragmatic abilities or whether different types of adjustments to listeners engage specific cognitive mechanisms to different degrees (see also Roberts & Patterson, 1983;Wardlow & Heyman, 2016).…”

Section: Explanations Of Children's Production Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In support of this possibility, informative language use in children during reference disambiguation tasks is associated with increased ability to explicitly report what each conversational partner knows (Roberts & Patterson, ), better performance on independent Theory of Mind tasks (Resches & Pérez Pereira, ), and stronger working memory (e.g., Nilsen & Graham, ; Nilsen et al, ; Wardlow & Heyman, ). At present, however, it is not clear whether standardized, global measures of cognitive skills are the best predictor of the entire range of children's pragmatic abilities or whether different types of adjustments to listeners engage specific cognitive mechanisms to different degrees (see also Roberts & Patterson, ; Wardlow & Heyman, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children's (and Adults') Production Adjustments to Generic and Particular Listener Needs

Grigoroglou

Papafragou

2019

Cognitive Science

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Adults design utterances to match listeners' informational needs by making both “generic” adjustments (e.g., mentioning atypical more often than typical information) and “particular” adjustments tailored to their specific interlocutor (e.g., including things that their addressee cannot see). For children, however, relevant evidence is mixed. Three experiments investigated how generic and particular factors affect children's production. In Experiment 1, 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children and adults described typical and atypical instrument events to a silent listener who could either see or not see the events. In later extensions, participants described the same events to either a silent (Experiment 2) or an interactive (Experiment 3) addressee with a specific goal. Both adults and 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds performed generic adjustments but, unlike adults, children made listener‐particular adjustments inconsistently. These and prior findings can be explained by assuming that particular adjustments can be costlier for children to implement compared to generic adjustments.

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Section: Audience Design In Children and Adultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Explanations Of Children's Production Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children's (and Adults') Production Adjustments to Generic and Particular Listener Needs

Grigoroglou

Papafragou

2019

Cognitive Science

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“…However, working memory was not related to gain after training with multiple try feedback. From the perspective of the 'Matthew effect' we might expect that the most capable students gain most from each form of training (Walberg and Tsai 1983) this is indeed a common finding in research investigating children's benefit from feedback (e.g., Wardlow and Heyman 2016). On the other hand, the right feedback could perhaps reduce cognitive load and the effect of (limited) working memory on performance (e.g., Adam and Vogel 2016;Resing et al 2017).…”

Section: Working Memory Moderates Feedback Effectsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Role of Working Memory and Strategy-Use in Feedback Effects on children’s Progression in Analogy Solving:an Explanatory Item Response Theory Account

Stevenson

2016

Int J Artif Intell Educ

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This study contrasted the effects of tutoring, multiple try and no feedback on children's progression in analogy solving and examined individual differences herein. Feedback that includes additional hints or explanations leads to the greatest learning gains in adults. However, children process feedback differently from adults and effective feedback likely differs between learners with different characteristics or at different stages in the learning process. In this paper multilevel explanatory item response theory models were used to examine individual differences in feedback effects in children's performance on a computerized pretest-training-posttest assessment of analogical reasoning. The role of working memory and ability level, based on initial strategy-use, were examined in a sample of 999 5-10 year-old children who received either tutoring feedback, multiple tries or no feedback during the training sessions. The results indicate that tutoring feedback leads to the greatest performance gains; however, this was moderated by working memory and ability level. Children who initially used less advanced strategies benefited more from each type of feedback than children who used advanced strategies at pretest. Higher working memory scores were linked to greater benefit from tutoring feedback or no feedback, whereas learning gains in the multiple try condition were not related to working memory. The findings of this study contribute to the growing literature on how to personalize feedback to the learner's instructional-needs.

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“…Taking the perspective of a conversational partner requires the inhibition of one's own perspective and the shifting to that of the addressee. Recent work on adult speakers (Ryskin, Benjamin, Tullis & Brown-Schmidt, 2015;Wardlow, 2013), and some emerging work in child and adolescent speakers (Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Nilsen, Varghese, Xu & Fecica, 2015;Torregrossa, 2017;Wardlow & Heyman, 2016), has identified executive function skills, particularly working memory (WM), and cognitive control, i.e. the ability to resolve a conflict by inhibiting an irrelevant response and promoting relevant information, as significant predictors of individual variation in referential communication success.…”

Section: Takedownmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences in the production of referential expressions: The effect of language proficiency, language exposure and executive function in bilingual and monolingual children

Serratrice¹,

Cat²

2019

Preprint

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One hundred and seventy-two English-speaking 5- to 7-year-olds participated in a referential communication task where we manipulated the linguistic mention and the visual presence of a competitor alongside a target referent. Eighty-seven of the children were additionally exposed to a language other than English (bilinguals). We measured children’s language proficiency, verbal working memory (WM), cognitivecontrol skills, family SES, and relative amount of cumulative exposure and use of the home language for the bilinguals. Children’s use of full Noun Phrases (NPs) to identify a target referent was predicted by the visual presence of a competitor more than by its linguistic mention. Verbal WM and proficiency predicted NP use, while cognitive control skills predicted both the ability to use expressions signallingdiscourse integration and sensitivity to the presence of a discourse competitor, but not of a visual competitor. Bilingual children were as informative as monolingual children once proficiency was controlled for.

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The roles of feedback and working memory in children’s reference production

Cited by 19 publications

References 60 publications

Children's (and Adults') Production Adjustments to Generic and Particular Listener Needs

Children's (and Adults') Production Adjustments to Generic and Particular Listener Needs

Role of Working Memory and Strategy-Use in Feedback Effects on children’s Progression in Analogy Solving:an Explanatory Item Response Theory Account

Individual differences in the production of referential expressions: The effect of language proficiency, language exposure and executive function in bilingual and monolingual children

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