Positive Peer Groups Support Preschoolers' Word Learning

Children learn language from their social partners, and differences in the behavior of these social partners can influence language learning outcomes. The literature largely focuses on adult caregivers; however, there is less clarity regarding the extent to which the social behavior of peers might also impact children's language learning. Children spend a large proportion of their time with peers once they enter preschool; peers are thus an important source of input for learning. Moreover, preschoolers are not just interacting with individual peers but also with groups of peers. To explore the impact of peers' social behavior on preschoolers' word learning, the present study manipulated peer behavior at two levels: individual peers and the peer group context. Forty-four preschoolers (36-60 months) completed a tablet task in which they watched a series of animated videos of a classroom. Participants were exposed to (1) either a positive or negative social group (manipulated between-subjects) and (2) a positive and negative individual (manipulated within-subjects). Participants were then taught four novel object-label pairings by the children in the video. We measured preschoolers' accuracy in learning these novel object-label pairs. Overall, preschoolers learned the words above chance and there was no difference in learning from the positive and negative individual peers. However, participants learned words significantly better in the positive group than in the negative group. This pattern of results suggests that peer groups, and the overall affective context of children's learning environments, may play important roles in boosting preschoolers' language learning trajectories.