The A B C of children

How do children learn new words? I am interested in the strategies that children use to resolve referential ambiguity, i.e., how children select referents for novel words. My earlier research focuses on the use of Mutual Exclusivity (ME), i.e., the assumption that each object has only one label and thus novel words should be associated with novel objects. I found that children are flexible word learners: Even when they rely on ME during referent selection, they are still willing to map the novel word to a familiar, name-known object^{1, 2}. I also show that children readily exploit different cues during referent selection, such as classifiers³ and word form-meaning systematicity⁴ (i.e., the assumption that objects that look similar have similar-sounding labels).

What are the benefits of interactive shared reading? There is general consenses that an interactive form of shared reading is beneficial to children's development. Indeed, one of my recent projects reveals a positive link between interactive shared reading and children's frontal brain activation¹. I am currently running a hyperscanning study² in which I measure interpersonal neural synchrony between parents and children during shared reading. My working hypothesis is that neural synchrony should be higher during shared reading than solo reading. Together, these studies demonstrate that parents can shape children's brain development through simple activities such as shared reading.

How do curiosity and interest shape learning? "Curiosity kills the cat, but satisfaction brings it back". It seems intuitive enough that children learn best when they are allowed to actively seek out information that they are interested in or are curious about. The story however, is not that straightforward. In one of my projects^§, I found that children only benefit from active learning if they are intrinsically motivated to sample objects actively. Crucially, allowing children to make this sampling decision (i.e., to sample actively or not) enhances learning. These findings indicate that the benefit of active learning is dependent on children’s individual sampling preference.