During the pandemic lots of families with young children had a crash course in using, even depending on, video-chat technologies to stay connected with relatives and friends, and even preschool children had experiences with trying to learn from synchronous video-chat with educators and caregivers. In a new study from the Read Lab started in 2021 and published this month, we tested just how well children could learn new vocabulary words (cute monster names) from a story read-aloud over zoom. It turns out, the word learning was pretty challenging for 3- to 5-year-olds who volunteered for our study, but the fun they had was easy.

Check out the full open-access paper here.

Student co-authors presenting the findings at the Sigma Xi Honors Society research celebration. Brianna Mireku & Katrina Ying in 2022 (top), and Hayley Harrison in 2023