Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

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.