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Slocum ETD 11-24-19.pdf (1.16 MB)

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The Role of Metacognition in Children's Disambiguation of Novel Name Reference

Slocum, Jeremy, PhD
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1574633259873614

Abstract Details

2019, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences.
When shown a familiar and a novel object and asked to pick the referent of a novel label, even one-year-olds tend to favor the novel object (Halberda, 2003; Mervis & Bertrand, 1994). However, this so-called disambiguation effect becomes stronger as children develop through preschool age (Lewis & Frank, 2015). Advances in metacognition may play a role in this developmental trend. Preschoolers’ awareness of their own lexical knowledge is associated with the strength of the disambiguation effect (Merriman & Schuster, 1991; Merriman & Bowman, 1989; Wall, Merriman, & Scofield, 2015). It is also associated with whether children can solve purely metacognitive forms of the disambiguation problem (Slocum & Merriman, 2018; Henning & Merriman, 2019). The current experiments tested the hypothesis that as the number of choices in a disambiguation problem increases, the frequency of correct response declines more sharply for children who lack awareness of lexical knowledge than for children who possessed it. The results of the first two experiments supported the main hypothesis. Two experiments also showed that awareness of lexical knowledge was associated with a more gradual increase in latency of correct solutions as number of choices increased. In Experiment 3, children’s eye movements were recorded as they attempted to solve 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-choice problems. Various aspects of children’s eye movements were analyzed, including the number of familiar object foils checked, the number of revisits to the target, and the proportion of looking time spent on the target object. The current experiments advance our insight into why the “awareness-of-knowledge advantage” in solving disambiguation problems tends to increase as number of choices increases.
William Merriman, PhD (Advisor)
Clarissa Thompson, PhD (Committee Member)
Jeff Ciesla, PhD (Committee Member)
Bradley Morris, PhD (Committee Member)
Sarah Rilling, PhD (Committee Member)
136 p.
Cognitive Psychology; Developmental Psychology; Psychology
cognitive development; word learning; metacognition; awareness of knowledge; preschoolers; disambiguation; mutual exclusivity

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Slocum, PhD, J. (2019). The Role of Metacognition in Children's Disambiguation of Novel Name Reference [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1574633259873614

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Slocum, PhD, Jeremy. The Role of Metacognition in Children's Disambiguation of Novel Name Reference. 2019. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1574633259873614.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Slocum, PhD, Jeremy. "The Role of Metacognition in Children's Disambiguation of Novel Name Reference." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1574633259873614

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1574633259873614
175
© 2019, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.