{"pk":29769,"title":"Preschoolers’ responses to unknown words: Questions and evaluation of definitionquality","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Asking questions about unknown things involves recognizing knowledge gaps, identifying information sources, and for-mulating appropriate questions. This active involvement propels development by individualizing the learning environment.To characterize active engagement in word learning, we investigated whether preschoolers ask questions about novel vo-cabulary and evaluate definition quality. In Study 1, preschoolers were asked to perform actions following instructionswith novel (transpose) or familiar (switch) verbs. They asked more questions about novel (M = 3.31 out of 9, SD = 3.34)than familiar verbs (M = .17, SD = .44), t(35) = -5.68, p ¡ .001. In Study 2, informative or uninformative definitions wereprovided. Preliminary data suggest that preschoolers only asked questions when faced with uninformative definitions (M= .65 out of 3). When faced with novel words, preschoolers not only elicit questions, but also determine whether theirinformation needs have been met.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Poster Session 2","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7461w5r8","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Laura","middle_name":"","last_name":"Janakiefski","name_suffix":"","institution":"Vanderbilt University","department":""},{"first_name":"Nicholas","middle_name":"","last_name":"Tippenhauer","name_suffix":"","institution":"Vanderbilt University","department":""},{"first_name":"Megan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Saylor","name_suffix":"","institution":"Vanderbilt University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2020-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/29769/galley/19623/download/"}]}