There are two popular views regarding the origin of critical thinking: (1) The concept of critical thinking began with Socrates and his Socratic method of questioning. (2) The term 'critical thinking' was first introduced by John Dewey in 1910 in his book "How We Think." This paper argues that both claims are incorrect. Firstly, critical…

In a recent study, preschoolers adapted their syntactic expectations about a familiar phrase in French; this adaptation affected later word learning. In two experiments, we probed the generality of this finding by replicating the experiment and extending it to a different expression in English. We examined the ambiguous phrase "the…

During word learning moments, toddlers experience labels and objects in particular environments. Do toddlers learn words better when the physical environment creates contrasts between objects with different labels? Thirty-six 21- to 24-month-olds (92% White, 22 female, data collected 8/21-4/22) learned novel words for novel objects presented using…

During vocabulary instruction, it is important to teach words until their representations are robust enough to be retained. For adults, the number of training sessions a target item is successfully retrieved during training predicts the likelihood of post-training retention. To assess this relationship in children, we reanalyzed data from Gordon…

Computational and animal models suggest that the unlearning or pruning of incorrect meanings matters for word learning. However, it is currently unclear how such pruning occurs during word learning and to what extent it depends on supervised and unsupervised learning. In two experiments (N[subscript 1] = 40; N[subscript 2] = 42), adult…

Item response theory (IRT) encompasses a broader class of measurement models than is commonly appreciated by practitioners in educational measurement. For measures of vocabulary and its development, we show how psychological theory might in certain instances support unipolar IRT modeling as a superior alternative to the more traditional bipolar…

We compare two frameworks for the segmentation of words in child-directed speech, PHOCUS and MULTICUE. PHOCUS is driven by lexical recognition, whereas MULTICUE combines sub-lexical properties to make boundary decisions, representing differing views of speech processing. We replicate these frameworks, perform novel benchmarking and confirm that…

This case study examined how a kindergarten teacher used and adapted three sets of science curricular materials to promote vocabulary development. Analysis of 126 minutes of science instruction across three video-recorded lessons and the curricular materials used focused on target word selection, discussion questions, and use of educative…

Very large numbers words such as "hundred," "thousand," "million," "billion," and "trillion" pose a learning problem for children because they are sparse in everyday speech and children's experience with extremely large quantities is scarce. In this study, we examine when children acquire the…

Relatively little work has focused on why we are motivated to learn words. In adults, recent experiments have shown that intrinsic reward signals accompany successful word learning from context. In addition, the experience of reward facilitated long-term memory for words. In adolescence, developmental changes are seen in reward and motivation…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if the Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers (VAULT) intervention could be efficaciously applied to a new treatment target: words a child neither understood nor said. We also assessed whether the type of context variability used to encourage semantic learning (i.e., action or object)…

Phonological awareness is taught from preschool onwards because of its impact on later reading skills. Numerous assessments and training sessions are available to guide childcare professionals. Most of them offer phonological sessions based on the use of pictures or visual aids. However, only few studies have shown the benefits of using this type…

Early vocabulary development benefits from diverse lexical exposures within children's language environment. However, the influence of lexical diversity on children as they enter middle childhood and are exposed to multimodal language inputs remains unclear. This study evaluates global and local aspects of lexical diversity in three…

Inhibitory control ability may affect the orthographic neighborhood size (ONS) effect by inhibiting the semantic activation of neighbors. However, few studies have explored whether and how inhibitory control plays a role in the ONS effect on recognition of Chinese words. This study screened individuals with high and low inhibitory control…

While much work has emphasized the role of the environment in language learning, research equally reports consistent effects of the child's knowledge, in particular, the words known to individual children, in steering further lexical development. Much of this work is based on cross-sectional data, assuming that the words typically known to…