Science achievement gaps are a persistent social issue and are largely explained by individual differences in science knowledge before formal schooling. We were interested in whether children's science vocabulary relates to these differences in science knowledge. This experiment examined whether children's science vocabulary predicted their science knowledge above and beyond general vocabulary size and demographic variables. Children aged 3 to 11 years (N = 91; 59 boys) participated in-person at a laboratory within a large university in a mid-size city in the midwestern United States. The tasks that the children completed assessed general receptive vocabulary, science productive vocabulary, general science knowledge, and conceptions of science as a practice. We found that science vocabulary was the strongest predictor of science knowledge above and beyond other factors, indicating that science vocabulary production may predict individual differences in science knowledge specifically when achievement gaps emerge (b = .28). In addition, children who produced more of certain types of science words, such as size and physical property words, depicted more science equipment and language elements in their drawings of scientists. These findings suggest that learning new words may be related to conceptual development in science and that examining early science vocabulary is a key step toward fully understanding science knowledge gaps.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Children ask many questions, but do not always receive answers to the questions they ask. We were interested in whether the act of generating questions, in the absence of an answer, is related to children’s later thinking. Two experiments examined whether children retain the questions they ask in working memory, and whether the type of questions asked relate to their categorization. Four to ten-year-old children (N = 42 in Experiment 1, N = 41 in Experiment 2) were shown 12 novel objects, asked three questions about each, and did not receive answers to their questions. Children recalled their questions in the first experiment and categorized variants of the novel objects in the second experiment. We found that children have robust working memory for their questions, indicating that these questions may relate to their subsequent thinking. Additionally, children generalize category boundaries more narrowly or broadly depending on the type of question they ask, indicating that children’s questions may reflect an underlying bias in how they think about the world. These findings suggest that future research should examine questions in the absence of answers to understand how inquiry affects children’s cognitive development. Copyright © 2022 Lazaroff and Vlach.

Research on children's categorization presents seemingly paradoxical results: Presenting exemplars at the same time (simultaneously) and presenting exemplars apart in time (spaced) have both been argued to support learning. This research was designed to explain these results by examining the visual attention and forgetting dynamics underlying various presentation schedules. Across three experiments, preschool-aged children (N = 292) were presented with science category exemplars on simultaneous, massed, and spaced schedules. The first experiment revealed that children had the strongest generalization performance in the spaced condition at the delayed post-test. In subsequent experiments, children visually attended less and forgot more during spaced learning. These results are discussed in the context of several theoretical accounts in cognitive science and applied implications for science education. © 2021 Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

The spacing effect is one of the most robust and replicable phenomena in psychological science, and holds promise for improving children's learning outcomes in educational settings. However, there is a striking limitation in the literature: very few studies have been conducted with young children (0–5-year-olds). Moreover, most studies examine children's learning on the group level, whereas early curricula typically focus on both group and individual outcomes. We predict that developmental and individual differences in visual attention, memory, prior knowledge, and metamemory will affect children's learning on massed and spaced schedules. Thus, we argue that the next critical step in research on the spacing effect is to develop a developmental and individual differences account. Indeed, this account will address limitations in theory and barriers in implementing the spacing effect in early educational settings. © 2020 Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition