Preschoolers ask questions about unknown words on video chat and in live interactions at similar rates.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a major increase in digital interactions in early experience. A crucial question, given expanding virtual platforms, is whether preschoolers' active word learning behaviors extend to their interactions over video chat. When not provided with sufficient information to link new words to meanings, preschoolers drive their word learning by asking questions. In person, 5-year-olds focus their questions on unknown words compared with known words, highlighting their active word learning. Here, we investigated whether preschoolers' question-asking over video chat differs from in-person question-asking. In the study, 5-year-olds were instructed to move toys in response to known and unknown verbs on a video conferencing call (i.e., Zoom). Consistent with in-person results, video chat participants (n = 18) asked more questions about unknown words than about known words. The rate of question-asking about words across video chat and in-person formats did not differ. Differences in the types of questions asked about words indicate, however, that although video chat does not hinder preschoolers' active word learning, the use of video chat may influence how preschoolers request information about words.

Gaining access to the unknown: Preschoolers privilege unknown information as the target of their questions about verbs.

Children are opportunistic word learners, making passive use of nearly any available cue to link labels and referents. However, children may also actively drive their word learning by inquiring about unknown labels. Until recently, research has largely overlooked active word learning mechanisms. In the current study, two experiments investigated the emergence of preschoolers' ability to tailor their questions about words and definitions to maximize information gains. Experiment 1 tested whether 3- and 5-year-olds' frequency of questionasking differed for known and unknown verbs in a referential communication task. Results revealed that 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 36) asked more questions about unknown verbs (M = 3.86) than about known verbs (M = 0.22, p < .001), but this tendency was greater for 5-year-olds (M = 6.11) than for 3-year-olds (M = 1.35, p < .001), suggesting a developmental difference in information-seeking proficiency. Experiment 2 tested whether 3- and 5-year-olds' frequency of question asking about unknown verbs differed when words were embedded in definitions of high- and low-informative quality. Results demonstrated that 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 42) asked questions about unknown verbs more when provided with uninformative definitions (M = 0.86) compared with informative definitions (M = 0.05, p = .028), suggesting a sensitivity to definition quality that drives preschoolers' information search for word meanings. These findings offer insight into children's information seeking during exposure to new words. Results advance the characterization of children's active verbal information seeking in shaping their word learning.

Induced forgetting of pictures across shifts in context.

Previous research from our lab has shown that recognizing an object stored in visual long-term memory leads to the forgetting of related objects. Here we ask whether context, an integral aspect to modern models of memory, plays a role in induced forgetting. We manipulated the activated context at test, both externally (e.g., changes in testing room) and internally (e.g., 1 hr and 24 hr later). We found that only interfering with the ability to internally reinstate context after 24 hr eliminated induced forgetting. Thus, we demonstrate that mental context reinstatement plays a role in induced forgetting and specify that models of memory should incorporate internal context reinstatement as an underlying factor of forgetting. We also propose a process model of induced forgetting, discuss limitations of laboratory-based memory tasks, and offer a new term, induced suppression, to collectively describe this robust phenomenon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Recognition-induced forgetting of schematically related pictures.

Recognition-induced forgetting is the category-specific forgetting of pictures that occurs when a subset of a category of pictures is recognized, leading to forgetting of the remaining pictures. We have previously shown that recognition-induced forgetting does not operate over categories created by temporal relationships, suggesting that this effect does not operate over episodic memory representations. Here we systematically tested whether schematically related categories of pictures are immune to recognition-induced forgetting. We found that sufficiently weak schematically related memories are vulnerable to recognition-induced forgetting. These results offer an alternative interpretation for evidence that recognition-induced forgetting does not operate over episodic memory representations. Evidence that the strength of schematic grouping modulates forgetting supports a model of recognition-induced forgetting in which the key determinant of forgetting is moderate activation. This is the first demonstration that recognition-induced forgetting operates over perceptually distinct objects, demonstrating the ubiquity of such forgetting.

Modality-specific forgetting.

A large body of literature agrees that accessing a target memory appears to trigger a difference-of-Gaussian memory activation pulse under which the target representation is activated and categorically flanking items are suppressed and forgotten. The nature of the underlying forgetting mechanism is far from settled, with support for several theories of forgetting. Here we argue the debate is partly fueled by different forgetting mechanisms underlying the forgetting of different memoranda. We capitalized on the unique aspect of the recognition-induced forgetting paradigm to test forgetting of both pictures and words in identical recognition-practice and restudy tasks. We found that memory for pictures and words followed different patterns of forgetting. Specifically, forgetting was retrieval specific for words, in that forgetting occurred only when words were recognized, and not when words were merely restudied. However, forgetting was not retrieval specific for pictures, in that forgetting occurred both when pictures were recognized as well as restudied. Further, patterns of forgetting operated along different category-level groupings for pictures and words. Words grouped along the superordinate level were susceptible to forgetting but pictures were not. The strength of this design is the ability to directly compare forgetting for different memoranda, establishing that patterns of forgetting are modality specific. These findings demonstrate that the mechanisms underlying forgetting may differ as a function of the particular memoranda, emphasizing the need for examining forgetting in long-term memory across modalities.