Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Associative Learning

Associative Learning

Associative learning is a fundamental concept in behavioral psychology, wherein a connection is established between two stimuli or events, leading to a learned response. This process is critical in understanding how behaviors are acquired and modified. Conditioning, the mechanism through which associations are formed, can be divided into two main types: classical conditioning and operant conditioning, each elucidating different aspects of associative learning.
Classical conditioning, also known...

Purposive Learning

Purposive Learning

E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...

Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic devices are cognitive tools that facilitate memory retention by linking new information to familiar patterns or organizational strategies. These techniques are beneficial for remembering complex or lengthy sets of information by simplifying and structuring them in easily retrievable ways.
Acronyms
Acronyms are created by using the initial letters of a series of words to form a new word or phrase. This approach condenses complex information into a single, memorable entity. For example,...

Observational Learning

Observational Learning

Albert Bandura's observational learning, also known as imitation or modeling, occurs when a person observes and imitates another's behavior. It is a quicker process than operant conditioning. A well-known example is the Bobo doll study, where children who saw an adult acting aggressively towards the doll were more likely to act aggressively when left alone, compared to those who observed a nonaggressive adult. Many psychologists view observational learning as a form of latent learning...

Cognitive Learning

Cognitive Learning

Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...

Introduction to Learning

Introduction to Learning

Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skills through practice or experience, leading to long-lasting behavioral changes. This acquisition occurs through interaction with the environment and requires practice or experience. For instance, mastering a skill such as surfing requires considerable practice and experience, highlighting the essential role of repeated interactions with the environment in learning.
In contrast to learned behaviors, unlearned behaviors such as crying, sexual...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Curiosity as a catalyst for conceptual change: A schema-based model of learning and development.

Acta psychologica·2026

Same author

A library for innovative category exemplars (ALICE) database: Streamlining research with printable 3D novel objects.

Behavior research methods·2024

Same author

How do emotion words impact children's emotion learning?

Developmental psychology·2024

Same author

Monolingual and bilingual children's performance on arithmetic fluency varies by language fluency.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2023

Same author

The role of syntactic cues in monolingual and bilingual two-year-olds' novel word disambiguation.

Infant behavior & development·2022

Same author

Sorting out emotions: How labels influence emotion categorization.

Developmental psychology·2022

Same journal

The interplay between Theory of Mind inferencing and visual attention in narrative comprehension in autistic preschoolers.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026

Same journal

Executive function and preschoolers' responses to severe transgressions: implications for early forgiveness.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026

Same journal

Shared cognitive risk factors underlying rapid automatized naming deficits for the comorbidity of developmental dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A computational parameter estimation via Bundesen's theory of visual attention.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026

Same journal

Do young children understand the objectivity of reality?

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026

Same journal

Learning words by ear or by eye: effects of modality on lexical configuration and lexicalization.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026

Same journal

Thinking outside the Box: Causal uncertainty motivates children's over-imitation.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 5, 2025

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation tDCS of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation tDCS of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Published on: July 13, 2019

One versus many: Multiple examples in word learning.

Gwendolyn F Price¹, Catherine M Sandhofer¹

¹Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

|May 17, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Children learning new words quickly map single labeled instances to categories. However, this initial advantage disappears after a brief delay when comparing multiple instances, suggesting context influences early word acquisition.

Keywords:

Children Comparison Contrast Delay Generalization Word learning

More Related Videos

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: June 25, 2019

Author Spotlight: Validation of SICOLE-R for Assessing Cognitive and Reading Skills in Spanish-Speaking Children and Its Role in Personalized Education

Author Spotlight: Validation of SICOLE-R for Assessing Cognitive and Reading Skills in Spanish-Speaking Children and Its Role in Personalized Education

Published on: August 16, 2024

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Nov 5, 2025

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation tDCS of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation tDCS of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Published on: July 13, 2019

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: June 25, 2019

Author Spotlight: Validation of SICOLE-R for Assessing Cognitive and Reading Skills in Spanish-Speaking Children and Its Role in Personalized Education

Author Spotlight: Validation of SICOLE-R for Assessing Cognitive and Reading Skills in Spanish-Speaking Children and Its Role in Personalized Education

Published on: August 16, 2024

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Science
Linguistics

Background:

Children can learn new words by mapping them to categories after hearing a single labeled instance.
Word learning is often enhanced through comparative or contrastive exposure to multiple category instances.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how different learning conditions (single instance, multiple instances, contrastive learning) affect 3-year-old children's novel noun generalization.
To examine the impact of immediate versus delayed testing on generalization performance across these conditions.

Main Methods:

A novel noun generalization task was administered to 3-year-old children.
Participants were exposed to a label for either a single instance, multiple instances, or a contrastive set.
Generalization was tested immediately or after a 10-second delay.

Main Results:

Immediately after learning, children in the single-instance condition generalized the novel noun better than those in the multiple-instance condition.
When tested after a brief delay, no significant differences in generalization were found among the different learning conditions.

Conclusions:

Immediate word learning benefits from single-instance exposure, potentially due to focused attention.
Brief delays in testing may equalize generalization performance across different initial learning strategies, highlighting the role of memory and processing time.