November is always a busy month, but one happy task now complete was sending off this year’s batch of Letters of Recommendation. Two former Read Lab students, Rosaleen Dhaliwal (’15) and Andrew Weaver (’15) are applying to some top graduate programs in Psychology and Education, and we are sending them our collective well-wishes for a satisfying return on those applications. Both of them will carry on building from their experiences working with young  children in the Read Lab (see Andrew’s recently published, co-authored work on children’s language play here) and the work they have been doing out in the world since graduating. We look forward to hearing where they will end up, and how they will be making the world a better place next fall!

What does it mean to really know a word? Well, the Read Lab just like other language learning researchers around the world grapple with that question all the time. We’ve seen over and over again in our research that kids can “pick up” new words like chimpanzee, or smooze, or even applaud just from encountering them in helpful places within a storybook. (for example). But, usually what we find is that kids who are just beginning to know these words are much better at finding pictures of them (e.g., I say “where’s the smooze?” and the 3-year-old picks the right monster out of a lineup) than they are at coming up with the words themselves (e.g., I point to the picture of the smooze and say “what’s that?” and the 3-year-old says “a monster” instead of “snooze”).

This is so common in language learning studies – that comprehension is easier than production –  that we often don’t pay much attention to it. And, so at first, in our recent study on learning challenging verbs from a treasure hunt storybook, again, we weren’t surprised to find that 3 and 4-year-olds were better at pointing to pictures of a little girl casting her flashlight into a cave, or demolishing part of a wall to find a treasure, or applauding for herself when she had succeeded  – we were just excited that children had picked up on these hard words in the first place! (see picture of how excited we were below).

But, this week, when we took a look at all the things that children said when we pointed to the pictures and asked them, “what is she doing here?” we noticed that while not many kids answered “oh, Dr. Read it is clear that she is casting” (a couple kinda did though), all the “wrong” answers they gave us were telling us something, too. Kids weren’t just saying “I don’t know” or “She’s doing something,” they were trying to find words that they already know well and connect these new words to them.

It’s an important step in language learning, and so common it gets overlooked – kids use what words they already know to create connections to new words, so that when those knew words are known they won’t be floating around in space, or trapped within a single treasure hunt storybook, they’ll be well integrated in the child’s own mind. So, children might know a little bit more about demolishing, even before they use that word themselves – but watch out, because eventually that word will become their own!

So much for updates throughout the weekend 🙂  Instead, we’re back, it’s Monday and we’re excited to report that our own research presentations (one on bilingual storybooks that work well for dual-language learners, and another on how to use rhyme in storybooks to help kids learn challenging verbs) were both well received and connected to some of the many, many other talks that we heard from other researchers around the country.

Lots of follow-up emails to send! The most important thing we learned? The world of research on children’s cognitive development – and especially how to support it, is full of talented scientists and people who care deeply about kids. We’re looking forward to the projects that this conference has sparked, sharing more of what we learned, and strengthening our collaborations! Next stop, APS.

We are at CDS! The Cognitive Development Society meeting is in Portland this year and while the rain falls outside it’s also drizzling new ideas here inside the conferences as well 🙂  We’ll update this post throughout the weekend, but for now we’ve heard some great talks from favorites in the field, Kathy Hirsch-Pasek and Alison Gopnik on communicating developmental science to public audiences.

We’re getting ready for our own presentations tomorrow afternoon on  how book formats can help support children’s vocabulary learning. More pictures coming…

The Read Lab is celebrating the start of a new quarter with a newly published paper on the connection between language development and children’s verbal play abilities (see reference below). “Play ability?” you might ask. Can you measure children’s play? Well, Read Lab alumni, Sarah James and Andrew Weaver found a way, and they also found that the more clever (and silly) preschoolers got with their play, the stronger their verbal skills were – so maybe it’s not all just nonsense after all.

Another win for Dr. Seuss!

To read the full article:

Read, K., James, S. & Weaver A. (2017) Pie, Fry Why: Language play in children three to five years old. Journal of Early Childhood Research. Prepublished February 14, 2017. doi:10.1177/1476718X16664556