The integration of testing practice into learning materials benefits long-term retention over simple studying, a phenomenonknown as the testing effect. Although the benefits of testing are observed in adults, it is uncertain whether young children,who have more constraints on their memory abilities, benefit from learning materials that incorporate testing. Preschool-age children (2-5 years; N=50) learned and were tested on ten novel word-object mappings during repeated storybookreading. Results revealed that childrens testing performance during storybook reading was related to their performance ona final, delayed post-test for retention. Additionally, regression modeling revealed that childrens success in testing duringstorybook reading predicted later retention above and beyond childrens age. These results suggest that, while challengingyoung children through testing can support long-term word learning regardless of age, children need to be successfulduring the challenge to benefit from a testing effect.

Word learning paradigms often teach children the name of a novel object and then immediately ask them to generalize thelabel to another object. This study uses a new paradigm that affords the ability to determine how childrens generalizationchanges over time. Participants (N=22, Mage=3.8 years) saw a novel object labeled by the experimenter (e.g., wug) andthen were shown five novel objects that each had an additional feature changed from the exemplar (i.e., the fifth objecthad five changed features), either immediately after the exemplar or after a five minute delay. Category membershipendorsement of the five test objects was higher at immediate test than delayed test, suggesting that children representnovel categories broadly at first but more narrowly over time. We propose that childrens forgetting of exemplars acrosstime leads to shifts in childrens generalization; as children forget exemplar features, category membership becomes morespecific.

Asking questions is a fundamental part of learning. Previous research has touched on the types of questions we askto gather information (e.g., Ruggeri & Lombrozo, 2015), but not yet on whether there are developmental differences inquestions that go unanswered. In this study, we looked at the unanswered questions children and adults ask when presentedwith new information. We found that adults asked questions on many topics such as behavior, category membership, andsocial relevance, while children mainly asked feature-related questions. Additionally, these unanswered questions wererelated to learning outcomes after the questioning period. For instance, results revealed that the presence of feature orcategory questions predicted how narrowly or broadly children categorized novel objects. These findings indicate thatunanswered questions may have consequences for learning outcomes, and that there are likely developmental differencesin how unanswered questions affect cognition.

To successfully learn words, children must map words to referents in the presence of competitor objects, and retain thesemappings across time. Past research suggests that competitor repetition supports word mapping. However, these studieshave not implemented delayed tests. Relying on a desirable difficulties framework, we predicted that competitor variabilitywould lead to better long-term retention of novel words. To test this prediction, children ages 2-6 completed a novel wordlearning task. Children were assigned to a competitor repetition or competitor variation condition. In Experiment 1,we tested retention of novel word-referent mappings at an immediate and 10-minute delayed test. In Experiment 2, weassessed whether retrieval dynamics during learning explained retention performance. Results revealed that competitorvariation engendered less retrieval success during learning. Competitor variation also reduced forgetting of novel wordsacross time. We highlight the importance of moving beyond immediate tests when characterizing competition in wordlearning.

One major challenge in science learning involves acquiring understanding of abstract concepts. Structural alignment (SA)has been shown to aid childrens learning of science concepts; however, research has yet to investigate how analogies affectchildrens ability to retain concepts over time. The current study addresses this gap by examining what information childrenremember and forget about science concepts using SA. Experiment 1 (N=120) instructed children 4-9 years on examplesof animal adaptation using SA, then tested their memory or generalization of these concepts immediately or after a delay.Experiment 2 (N=118) used the same design, but prompted children to recall only perceptual or relational information.Results revealed that children rapidly forget and fail to generalize relational information relative to perceptual information,and that this pattern persists even with linguistic supports to recall it. This suggests that additional cognitive supports areneeded to facilitate long-term relational learning of science concepts.

Children’s spatial language abilities relate to their spatial skills. We propose that this relation arises from attentionto spatial dimensions influencing both spatial word and spatial skill acquisition. This study tests whether attending to spatialdimensions in a word learning task predicts spatial vocabulary. Three to 5-year-olds completed a novel word assessment testingcategorization of angles, shapes, and a test of spatial vocabulary. In the novel word assessment, children were presented withan exemplar angle with a novel label and asked to select another angle sharing the label. Foils matched the exemplar in degree,orientation, color, or size. Significant age differences occurred in children’s bias to select foils based on angle degree (butno age differences occurred in exemplar choices based on shape). Children showing an angle bias had significantly higherspatial vocabulary than those who did not. These findings show that attending to relevant spatial dimensions predicts spatialvocabulary.

The spacing effect describes the robust finding that long-term learning is promoted when learning events are spaced out in time rather than presented in immediate succession. Studies of the spacing effect have focused on memory processes rather than for other types of learning, such as the acquisition and generalization of new concepts. In this study, early elementary school children (5- to 7-year-olds; N = 36) were presented with science lessons on 1 of 3 schedules: massed, clumped, and spaced. The results revealed that spacing lessons out in time resulted in higher generalization performance for both simple and complex concepts. Spaced learning schedules promote several types of learning, strengthening the implications of the spacing effect for educational practices and curriculum.