ERIC Number: EJ1319982
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1522-7227
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Toddler Word Learning Is Robust to Changes in Emotional Context
Infant and Child Development, v30 n6 e2270 Nov-Dec 2021
Word learning is a crucial aspect of early social and cognitive development, and previous research indicates that children's word learning is influenced by the context in which the word is spoken. However, the role of emotions as contextual cues to word learning remains less clear. This study investigated word learning among 2.5-year-old children in angry, happy, sad, and variable emotional contexts. Fifty-six children (30 female; mean age = 2.49 years) participated in a novel noun generalization task in which children observed an experimenter labelling objects in either a consistently angry, consistently happy, consistently sad, or variable (one exemplar per emotion) context. The children were then asked to identify the label-object association. The results revealed that children's performance was above chance levels for all four conditions (all t's > 3.68, all p's < .01), but performance did not significantly differ by condition (F[3,52] = 0.51, p = .677). These results provide valuable information regarding potential boundaries for when contextual information may versus may not influence children's word learning.
Descriptors: Toddlers, Language Acquisition, Emotional Response, Psychological Patterns, Identification, Context Effect
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (DHHS/NIH); National Institutes of Health (DHHS)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: F31HD100067
Author Affiliations: N/A