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 "We know that young children in general are very good at forming
expectations about what's going to happen next, and they readily
detect when something new or surprising happens," said study
co-author Viridiana Benitez, a psychology researcher at Arizona
State University in Tempe.
But we don't know whether forming these expectations has
consequences for learning, Benitez said by email.
Benitez and colleagues tested what happened when 107 toddlers heard
made-up words like "bosa," "tulver," "sarn," and "pisk."
During the tests, toddlers sat on a parent's lap in front of a large
screen. The screen showed four closed boxes, one in each corner of
the screen. Inside the boxes were pictures of unfamiliar shapes.
In the first part of the experiment, the boxes opened one at a time,
always in the same order. But while the sequence of box openings was
predictable, the object inside the box was not.
After the boxes had opened and closed in the same order five times,
the researchers started assigning the made-up words like "sarn" and
"bosa" to the weird objects inside the boxes.
The children heard the name of the object after the box opened and
their gaze was fixed on that box.
In half of the trials when the children heard names for the objects,
the boxes opened in the expected order. In the other half of the
object-naming trials, a box would open out of order.
The researchers tracked where the children were looking with a
special camera mounted beneath the screen. They used the child's
gaze to test whether the child learned the novel words. For example,
two objects were shown on the screen, and the children were asked
questions like, "Where is the sarn?" Researchers used the
eye-tracking camera to see if the children looked at the correct
object.
In this way, the researchers compared how well children learned the
names of objects when the boxes opened in the expected order versus
how well they learned when the boxes opened unpredictably.
"The results of our research suggest that knowing what will happen
next can help toddlers learn new words," Benitez said by email.
"Predictability may be an important factor to consider for
understanding language and cognitive development."
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Parents may find that toddlers learn new words more easily when they
have a set routine and are in familiar surroundings, Benitez added.
"When babies are learning language, they often hear lots of words in
the presence of lots of objects," Benitez said. "Knowing when and
where an object will be when it is named may allow children to
attend to it at the right time and process and learn the name for
that object."
There are several ways predictability might help with language
learning, said Dr. Caroline Kistin, a pediatrics researcher at
Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine who
wasn't involved in the study.
"Making predictions about upcoming events may enhance memory and may
allow for faster information processing," Kistin said by email.
"Predictable events may also allow young children to pay attention
longer, while unpredictable events may be distracting."
These findings, however, are at odds with some other research
suggesting unpredictability might help children learn, said Natalie
Brito of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human
Development at New York University in New York City.
"These results were surprising as they were not consistent with
recent infant findings showing increases in novel learning from
violations of expectations," Brito, who wasn't involved in the
study, said by email.
"Violations of expectations may signal to the infant the need to
further explore the situation, whereas when novel information is
presented after a predictable event, learning may be increased due
to heightened attention," Brito added. "Overall, the current results
suggest that predictability can influence learning."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2PvDVHJ Current Biology, online August 16,
2018.
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