Speech Production Effects on Word Learning and Memorization in Children

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore the impact of speech production on memory and learning in children, by investigating the Production Effect and the Reverse Production Effect. In the Production Effect, a memory advantage is observed for items that are produced aloud compared to items studied under other actions, such as reading silently or listening. Conversely, the Reverse Production Effect is a memory advantage for items studied under listening conditions, compared to producing aloud. Despite extensive research showing the Production Effect with adults, its manifestation and underlying mechanisms in children remains largely unexplored. This dissertation focuses on children, covering an age range from 2-to-6-years-old across all experiments combined. Different methodologies were used to study memory and learning in monolingual English-speaking children, specifically free recall tasks, identification tasks, and recognition tasks using the Visual World Paradigm with eye-tracking.

This dissertation presents four articles that investigate different aspects of the Production Effect and Reverse Production Effect, with a larger goal of examining how children's developing cognitive and linguistic abilities may influence the effect of speech production on memory and learning. The first article used a developmental approach to investigate whether the Production Effect changes across development, using a free recall task with real words. While older children (4-to-6-years-old) were able to benefit from speech production, younger children (2-to-3-years-old) showed a Reverse Production Effect, suggesting that the developmental and linguistic stage of the learner interacts with the Production Effect. The second study investigated whether the Production Effect found in children (5-to-6-years-old) remains after a 1-week-delay. Results show that for children who did show the Production Effect initially, this effect was not present when tested on the same words after 1 week, suggesting that the memory advantage is restricted in time. The third article investigated whether the Reverse Production Effect found in children (5-and-6-year-olds) is specific to speech production, or whether other actions would also disrupt learning. All actions patterned similarly, showing a Reverse Production Effect, indicating that this is not solely triggered by speech production, but by performing any action while learning. The fourth article investigated whether a more familiar context (storybook reading) and multiple exposures to the novel items would increase the chance of the Production Effect emerging in a word learning task with children aged 4-and-6-years. Results patterned with previous Reverse Production Effect findings, with further effects of children's age and the number of exposures during training.

These findings deepen our understanding of how speech production impacts memory encoding and retrieval across different stages of development. By examining the Production Effect and Reverse Production Effect in children, this dissertation contributes to psycholinguistic theories of language acquisition and memory, offering valuable insights into learning strategies from early childhood. Results from this dissertation show that production and perception influence memory in distinct ways. Practical implications include potential applications in educational settings.