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Developmental Changes in Causal Supports for Word Learning

This work explores whether the facilitative effect of causal information on preschoolers’ word and descriptive fact learning persists in school-age children. Twenty-three 5-year-olds just beginning school and 23 6- to 7-year-olds who had accumulated over a year of schooling were taught novel words along with descriptions of causally rich, causally weak, or arbitrary and transient properties of their referents. Kindergarteners, but not first graders, were better able to productively recall causally rich descriptions than causally weak or baseline transient descriptions. The benefits of causal information to word learning followed the same developmental pattern. Only the younger group comprehended words accompanied by causally rich descriptions better than those accompanied by causally weak descriptions. Therefore, while causal information continues to support word and fact learning as children enter kindergarten, its influence is mitigated by other forces by the time children complete first grade.