Cronin-Golomb Lucy M, Pejic Jelena, Miller-Goldwater Hilary E, Bauer Patricia J
Department of Psychology, Emory University.
Cogn Dev. 2024 Jul-Sep;71. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2024.101454. Epub 2024 Jun 7.
Informal educational opportunities such as visits to museums, aquariums, and zoos support children's semantic knowledge gain. Most research focuses on outcomes of direct learning, such as factual recall. The extent to which children engage in productive memory processes such as inferential reasoning and self-derivation through memory integration is not yet well understood. We assessed 8- to 9-year-old children's performance on tests of direct (e.g., fact recall) and productive (e.g., inference, integration) learning from virtual museum exhibits. We also examined the influence of children's involvement on learning outcomes, through measuring within-exhibit dyadic conversation and post-exhibit reflection. Children performed successfully on all three tests of learning; fact recall was the most accessible and self-derivation was the least. Both within and post-exhibit involvement predicted overall learning outcomes; within-exhibit conversational phrases predicted self-derivation performance in particular. The current work provides novel insights into mechanisms that support children's informal learning.
诸如参观博物馆、水族馆和动物园等非正式教育机会有助于儿童语义知识的获取。大多数研究关注直接学习的成果，比如事实性记忆。儿童通过记忆整合参与推理和自我推导等生产性记忆过程的程度尚未得到充分理解。我们评估了8至9岁儿童在虚拟博物馆展品的直接学习（如事实性记忆）和生产性学习（如推理、整合）测试中的表现。我们还通过测量展品内的二元对话和展品后的反思，研究了儿童参与程度对学习成果的影响。儿童在所有三项学习测试中均表现良好；事实性记忆最容易，自我推导最难。展品内和展品后的参与程度均预测了总体学习成果；展品内的对话短语尤其预测了自我推导的表现。当前的研究为支持儿童非正式学习的机制提供了新的见解。
