Learning to learn words from video: 2.5-year-olds benefit from continued use of supportive scaffolding

• In Event: Young Children and Digital “Symbols”: A Socio-contextual Lens

Abstract

Young children struggle learning new words when presented on video (DeLoache et al., 2010, Troseth et al., 2018). Adult co-viewers can support children through supportive scaffolds, such as drawing connections between the on-screen and real-world objects (Strouse & Troseth, 2014; Strouse et al., 2018). An important question is whether scaffolding teaches children how the video refers to the real world symbolically rather than only the specific one-to-one association, such that they will subsequently transfer the label from the video to its real referent. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether children continue to learn words from video after supportive adult scaffolds are withdrawn.

Sixty-three children 28.0-31.9 months (M = 29.96, SD = .89) and 61 children 34.0-37.9 months (M = 35.92, SD = 1.21) participated in a series of three word learning trials, Similar to O’Doherty et al. (2011), an on-screen adult showed children an array of 3 novel objects which she then placed inside their own container. As she withdrew one object at a time, she labelled one of the objects while commenting on the remaining ones. At test, children were presented with the array of 3 objects and asked to select the one that corresponded with the novel label.

Children were randomly assigned to conditions. In the supportive condition, an in-person adult explicitly drew connections between each on-screen object and the corresponding real object in the room with the child. In the unsupportive condition, the in-person adult provided similar-length statements about the objects, but did not draw connections between them. In the partial scaffold condition, the in-person adult provided the supportive scaffolds for the first two trials and the unsupportive version for the third trial.

A GEE testing for age and condition differences in trial 3 performance indicated a significant age x condition interaction, Wald χ2 (df=2) = 8.25, p = .016. Bonferroni corrected follow-up contrasts indicated that at 30 months, children selected the correct object more often in the supportive (71%) than the unsupportive (33%) scaffold condition, p = .023. Performance in the partial scaffold condition was not significantly different from the other conditions (52%). At 36 months, performance across conditions did not differ (50-79%). Tests against chance (33%) indicated that at 30 months, only children in the full scaffold condition chose correctly more often than chance. At 36 months, children in the unsupportive (70%) and partially supportive (79%) scaffold conditions chose above chance.

These findings show that at 30 months, children’s learning was facilitated by the continuous supportive scaffolding. Children relied on the adult drawing the connection for each specific pair of objects, which indicates that they have difficulty drawing a symbolic connection between a video image and its referent. At 36 months, however, children performed similarly well across conditions, indicating they could draw symbolic connections without adult support.

Authors

• Gabrielle A. Strouse, University of South Dakota
  Presenting Author

• Salima Hackeek, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patricia A Ganea, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author