Prediction error boosts retention of novel words in adults but not in children

• Main Authors: Gambi, C. (Author), Pickering, M.J (Author), Rabagliati, H. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V. 2021
• Subjects: adult; Adult; article; child; Child; Child, Preschool; Disconfirmed predictions; expectation; female; human; human experiment; Humans; knowledge; Knowledge; language; Language; learning; Learning; linguistics; Linguistics; male; memory consolidation; Memory retention; Mutual exclusivity; prediction; Prediction error; preschool child; verbal learning; Verbal Learning; Word learning
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 How do we update our linguistic knowledge? In seven experiments, we asked whether error-driven learning can explain under what circumstances adults and children are more likely to store and retain a new word meaning. Participants were exposed to novel object labels in the context of more or less constraining sentences or visual contexts. Both two-to-four-year-olds (Mage = 38 months) and adults were strongly affected by expectations based on sentence constraint when choosing the referent of a new label. In addition, adults formed stronger memory traces for novel words that violated a stronger prior expectation. However, preschoolers' memory was unaffected by the strength of their prior expectations. We conclude that the encoding of new word-object associations in memory is affected by prediction error in adults, but not in preschoolers. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.