Poster #41 - The Effect of Memory Tests on Children's Lexical Knowledge Judgments

• In Event: Poster Session 12

Abstract

The ability to judge one’s knowledge improves during early childhood and may play a
critical role in language acquisition. Various metacognitive experiences (e.g., whether a stimulus
evokes a feeling of familiarity) tend to be reliable bases for making knowledge judgments. Our
aim was to explore whether increasing the salience of such metacognitive experiences would
cause preschoolers to make more accurate knowledge judgments about words and objects. Hartin
et al. (2018) found that exposing children to objects that contrasted in familiarity caused them to
make more accurate judgments about whether they knew names for other objects.
In Study 1, 3- and 4-year-old children were exposed to words that either contrasted in
familiarity, were all familiar, or were all non-word stimuli. We predicted that those exposed to
contrasting words would make more accurate judgments about whether various words and
objects were ones they knew.
Eighteen children were assigned to each of three conditions (M age = 4-1; R = 3-0 to 5-
0). During a video-chat, E told the child to listen to two animals and remember the things that
each said they liked. Conditions differed in what these things were: a mix of novel and familiar
words (Familiarity Contrast); all familiar words (Familiars); or non-word stimuli (Control).
Children then made judgments about whether other words were ones they knew as well as about
whether various objects had names that they knew. Results showed that the three conditions did
not differ in word judgments. On the object judgments, both the Familiarity Contrast and
Familiars conditions outperformed the Control condition. However, the two treatment
conditions did not differ.
A second study will explore a potential confound in Study 1. Children may have engaged
in greater semantic processing in the Familiars than in the Familiarity Contrast condition. For
example, to remember that it was the dog who liked cup, they might have thought about the
properties of a cup that might appeal to a dog). This experience may have caused them to use
semantic criteria when judging whether various words or objects were ones they knew.
To examine this possibility, children will be assigned to three conditions: Familiarity
Contrast - Speaker Recognition, Familiars - Speaker Recognition; and Familiars – Semantic
Judgment. In the speaker recognition tasks, each pre-exposed word will be uttered by either the
dog or the cat and children will be asked to report which animal said it. The Contrast condition
will hear a mix of novel and familiar words whereas the Familiars condition will hear only
familiar words. Because semantic processing is minimized, the Contrast condition is predicted to
outperform the Familiars condition on the subsequent word and object knowledge judgment
tasks. In the semantic judgment task, each word will be presented by E and children will be
asked to judge whether the dog or cat would like the word more. Because this task requires
semantic processing, the Familiars condition who received this task is predicted to outperform
the other Familiars condition on the subsequent knowledge judgment tasks.

Authors

• Theresa Peters, Kent State University
  Presenting Author

• William E Merriman