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Word learning from childhood to adulthood
Word learning from childhood to adulthood
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (2025-2027) *starting soon*
Children are remarkable language learners. Parents often marvel at the striking rate at which their children absorb new words. Despite this common intuition, we know very little about why learning differs between children and adults. Neither do we know when changes occur over adolescence. This project draws upon theories of memory to understand word learning from childhood to adulthood.
Online and offline mechanisms of memory integration in children and adults
Online and offline mechanisms of memory integration in children and adults
Funder: Experimental Psychology Society (2023-2024)
Key collaborator: Layla Unger
Learning about the world around us involves both encoding new experiences, and integrating them with other experiences to build a stable repository of knowledge. For example, from hearing the word “chicken” used to label a chicken and subsequently seeing a chicken on a farm, one can learn that “chickens” live on farms. This project examined how these fundamental learning and memory processes change between childhood and adulthood.
Selected talks and publications
Selected talks and publications
You can also get a sense of our research through recent publications. You can browse a full list of publications on Google Scholar. Listed here are selected talks and articles that represent the breadth of our research interests.
Talk: James, E. (2024). Slow and steady wins the race? Consolidating new vocabulary in childhood and adulthood. Cambridge Open Engage. https://doi.org/10.33774/coe-2024-7hqnd
James, E., Gaskell, M.G., Weighall, A., & Henderson, L.M. (2017). Consolidation of vocabulary during sleep: the rich get richer? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 77, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.054
James, E., Gaskell, M.G., & Henderson, L.M. (2019). Offline consolidation supersedes prior knowledge benefits in children’s (but not adults’) word learning. Developmental Science, e12776. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12776
James, E., Koutraki, Y.G., & Tickle, H. (2020). Sleep-associated consolidation in app-based language learning. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 1178-1184. https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci20/papers/0216/0216.pdf
James, E., Currie, N. K., Tong, S. X., & Cain, K. (2021). The relations between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in beginner readers to young adolescents. Journal of Research in Reading, 44(1), 110-130. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12316
James, E., Thompson, P.A., Bowes, L., & Nation, K. (2023). Heterogeneity in children’s reading comprehension difficulties: a latent class approach. JCPP Advances, e12177. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.12177
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