Word learning from videos: evidence from 2-year-olds

Young children are exposed to large amounts of screen media daily and many parents believe educational media is a source of learning for their children. However, whether or not children are able to learn information from television and video is still inconclusive. Of specific interest in the current studies was whether or not children are able to learn words from television or videos. In Study 1, 2-year olds were introduced to a novel word through a short animated video and then tested to assess their ability to comprehend and produce the name of the word in both a video setting and a live setting. Study 2 examined 2-year olds ability to honor mutual exclusivity to words learned from videos using the same experimental tasks. The results suggest children are able to add a word learned from video to their productive vocabulary, transfer their knowledge of the word learned from video into their everyday setting, and apply the word learning principle of mutual exclusivity to words learned from videos.