About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 11. Language, Communication

Abstract

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Children learn new words in a variety of settings, including during shared book-reading and video co-viewing. As children encounter new words across these settings, their learning can be enhanced when parents are socially contingent (SC) - when they are timely, reliable, and responsive during interactions (Roseberry et al., 2014). This enhanced learning is likely driven by SC parents who are providing additional information relevant to the storyline, whether in the form of extra-textual talk (Senechal, 1997) or by expanding on the video (Strouse et al., 2018). However, an open question is the extent to which storytelling modality (print vs. digital formats) impacts how parents facilitate learning and how modality and social interaction interact to influence children’s word learning.

To address this question, the current study directly compared word learning across three modalities (traditional print book, video, and e-book) and examined how SC interactions impacted learning across modalities. Using a lab-created story, 81 2.5- to-3-year-old children and a parent were exposed to four novel word-object pairs in one of the three modalities. Half of parents were instructed to elaborate on the story’s content (SC), while the other half either read the text as it was or watched the video quietly (non-SC). After exposure, children completed eight two-alternative forced choice test trials to assess their retention of the word-referent pairs. Parents’ and children’s repetition of the novel words during the interaction was recorded, and children’s choice at test served as the key measure of word learning.

Overall, children’s word learning performance did not differ by modality (F(2,80)=.312, p=.733) nor by SC condition (F(1,80)=.766, p=.384), and the interaction between modality and SC condition was non-significant (F(2,80)=1.167, p=.317). However, children learned words at levels significantly greater than chance in the Book-SC, Video-SC, and Video-Non-SC conditions (ts(14-18)>2.490, ps<.026; Figure 1). Additionally, parental repetition of the novel words was significantly related to children’s production of the novel words, r(80)=.854, p<.001, and the frequency of children’s repetitions was positively correlated with their word learning at test, r(80)=.250, p=.024 (see Figure 2).

Taken together, these results suggest that children were capable of learning words from stories under certain conditions. First, though modality overall did not impact learning, comparison to chance revealed that in settings where interaction was more familiar (Book-SC and Video conditions), children were more likely to learn the words compared to contexts that were more novel (e-book conditions). Further, across all conditions, children retained more of the word-object pairs when they themselves repeated the novel words, something that was directly shaped by having a socially contingent parent. These findings thus suggest that how socially contingent an interaction is matters for children’s word learning, and that such social engagement ought to be utilized across multiple modalities for storytelling.

Author information

Author	Role
Megan G. Lorenz, Ph.D., Augustana College	Presenting author
Sarah C. Kucker, Southern Methodist University	Non-presenting author

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