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Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 16, 2025

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Published on: June 30, 2020

Children Predict Improvement on Novel Skill Learning Tasks.

Xiuyuan Zhang¹, Brandon A Carrillo¹, Ariana Christakis¹

¹Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

Child Development

|April 2, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Children

Keywords:

development learning learning curves predictions of learning

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Last Updated: May 16, 2025

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Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking IPL: Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking IPL: Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

Published on: December 14, 2012

Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Developmental Psychology
Learning Sciences

Background:

Skill acquisition typically involves an initial period of poor performance followed by improvement with practice.
Understanding children's intuitive grasp of this learning phenomenon is crucial for educational development.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether children intuitively understand that skill performance improves over time with practice.
To examine age-related differences in children's predictions of skill learning trajectories.

Main Methods:

Two preregistered experiments were conducted with US children aged 4 to 8 years.
Participants predicted performance on novel skill learning tasks, with varying cognitive demands in Experiment 2.

Main Results:

Older children (7-8 years) accurately predicted performance improvement.
Younger children (4-5 years) predicted flat or declining performance, especially on tasks with higher cognitive load.
4- to 6-year-old children predicted improvement on a task with reduced cognitive demands.

Conclusions:

Children's expectations of skill improvement develop with age.
Younger children require support (scaffolding) to understand and predict learning trajectories.
This research highlights the developing metacognitive awareness of learning in children.