Abstracts

Human infants enter the world in a prolonged state of dependency, facing the fundamental challenge of reducing uncertainty about their environment and learning more about the world around them. From this perspective, word learning is not merely the accumulation of labels, but a strategy for resolving gaps in knowledge. Building on Jean Piaget’s notion of the child as an active learner and Lev Vygotsky’s view of the child as a social apprentice, we propose that children’s motivations to learn words are driven by the dynamic interplay between internally generated uncertainty and socially mediated information. The research on active learning and social learning has, however, long run in parallel, often without acknowledgement or due consideration of the other. This talk will synthesise these literatures and propose a developmental framework that captures how children’s motivation to learn may change across early childhood with particular focus on the role of children’s changing metacognitive awareness, sociability and language competence on early language learning. 

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Why is testing more effective than study for learning and memory? Growing evidence suggests that learning during test (rather than study) is driven by prediction errors (the mismatch between expected and actual feedback), which engage dopaminergic systems to support efficient learning. However, real-world learning environments often lack explicit feedback, yet testing advantages persist even in the absence of feedback. We propose that learners rely on temporal prediction errors (mismatches between successive predictions) during test, a process not available during study. We provide converging computational, behavioural, and fMRI evidence for this account. First, an associative neural network that learns from temporal prediction errors reproduces the feedback-free testing effect. Critically, the model predicts that the testing effect is maximal at intermediate levels of initial learning, where temporal prediction errors are largest. Behavioral and fMRI results confirmed the model’s prediction, showing that both the testing effect and ventral striatal activation (a key region of dopaminergic circuitry) peak at intermediate initial learning levels. Moreover, test (not study) promoted hippocampal pattern separation, potentially reducing interference for long-term retention.

A growing body of evidence links reward-related neural processes to successful language learning in adults, and social interaction might represent a particularly powerful context for these processes. In this talk, I draw on our recent theoretical review (Zappa, Slater & Rodriguez-Fornells, 2025, npj Science of Learning) to argue that social interaction shapes second language learning. Learning a second language in social environments likely engages multiple forms of social reward. For example, native or advanced speakers often provide positive or negative performance feedback on learners' productions, which can function as social reward and punishment. The emotional value carried by this feedback may further engage reward-motivational systems in ways that strengthen the encoding of new linguistic information. I present evidence that dynamic social feedback, compared to matched symbolic feedback, produces broader cortical differentiation between positive and negative outcomes and stronger associations with post-training performance. I argue that social feedback operates both as an informative signal and as an emotionally meaningful one, and that examining how positive and negative social feedback shapes adult second language learning could act as an experimental window into how reward shapes learning more broadly.

Slides 

Successful coordination of infant attention and parent speech during free play supports infants' language development. Parents' responsive linguistic input reduces uncertainty in label-referent associations and provides information at moments of infants' increased attention and receptiveness. While infants frequently lead the dyads’ focus of attention, parent speech has been shown to scaffold infants’ attention towards fixated objects. So far, however, little is known about the qualitative characteristics of parent speech during such interactions, and their effects on infants' attention. We analysed the content and communicative intent of caregivers' speech to their 18-month-old infants (N = 31) during free play. Parents were most likely to follow infant attention with their speech, both temporally and topically, and parents' topically aligned, but not misaligned speech was associated with infants' sustained attention. Qualitative analysis of speech types revealed mostly object-focused speech in interactions with familiar objects, but a broader range of speech types in interactions with novel objects. These findings emphasize the importance of parents' contingent speech in free play and provide a glimpse into possible differences in the interaction dynamics with novel and familiar objects.

Musical reward sensitivity (also called musical hedonia) and rhythmic abilities are closely linked in adults, and growing evidence suggests that rhythmic processing plays a key role in language processing. However, little is known about how individual differences in musical hedonia emerge in childhood and whether they modulate rhythmic processing that supports language learning. Investigating this question requires tools that are both psychometrically sound and developmentally appropriate for young populations. 

In this talk, I am presenting the eBMRQc, a new, validated tool to measure music reward sensitivity in children. It is a child-friendly adaptation of the extended Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (eBMRQ), designed for direct administration to children from age six. Unlike existing parent-report adaptations, the eBMRQc captures children's own subjective experience of musical pleasure across six dimensions: Emotional Evocation, Mood Regulation, Musical Seeking, Sensorimotor Engagement, Social Reward, and Absorption.

This tool lays the groundwork for a broader research question: Do children who experience greater musical pleasure also show better rhythm processing, mirroring the link observed in adults - and does this, in turn, predict language learning outcomes? If higher hedonic children are also more sensitive to rhythmic structure, they may derive stronger implicit learning signals from the prosodic and metrical cues embedded in speech.

Conversational timing is a key component of social reward. Across cultures, smooth turn-taking with minimal gaps is associated with greater enjoyment, social connection, and interactional success, whereas longer silences can reduce perceived affiliation and engagement (Templeton et al., 2023). Virtual conversations often contain longer gaps and more overlaps than face-to-face interactions due to transmission delays, reduced visual cues, and diminished opportunities for mutual monitoring. In second-language learning contexts, such disruptions may influence not only communication but also the social rewards that sustain learner motivation and participation.

This study examines how interactional environment influences perceptions of communicative success and social reward in Welsh learner–tutor conversations. In Stage 1, focus groups with L2 Welsh learners and tutors explored the question, “What makes a Welsh learner–tutor conversation successful?” Reflexive thematic analysis identified nine dimensions of interactional quality spanning social-affective factors (e.g., rapport, comfort, engagement) and communicative competence (e.g., fluency, comprehension, communicative effectiveness).

These themes informed a Stage 2 perception study in which native/fluent Welsh speakers (n = 14) and L2 learners (n = 10) rated 40-second clips of B1 learner–tutor interactions recorded in face-to-face and virtual settings. Participants evaluated each interaction on continuous 0–100 scales across the nine dimensions.

Preliminary findings indicate that virtual interactions were perceived less positively overall. Native/fluent listeners showed reductions across all dimensions, while L2 listeners showed significant declines primarily in social-affective evaluations. These patterns suggest that virtual environments may diminish the perceived social reward of language-learning interactions and that sensitivity to timing-related disruptions differs according to listener experience.