Examining the influence of encoding and retrieval contexts on 2- to 4-year-olds' acquisition of nouns and verbs

This study investigates whether the context in which a word is learnt affects noun and verb learning. There is mixed evidence in studies of noun learning, and no studies of background perceptual context in verb learning. Two-, three-, and four-year-olds (n = 162) saw a novel object moved in a novel way while hearing four novel words, either nouns or verbs. They were asked to generalize the word to a similar action or object shown in the same or different context. Results demonstrate that 2- and 3-year-olds were more accurate at test when learning nouns than verbs, demonstrating that verb learning is difficult; 4-year-olds were successful at learning both word types. For all ages, and both word types, context changes did not impact word learning. These results extend previous findings that context does not influence noun learning, while suggesting perceptual context may not play a major role in verb learning, which is a new finding.