Leveraging Interests & Nurturing Knowledge

• Aliyah Harrison, Cognitive Science, University of Delaware

• Amanda Seidl, Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Delaware

Children learn words throughout childhood (Miller & Gildea, 1987), however, learning words in some contexts may be challenging. One challenging context occurs when there is a dialect mismatch, which results when a child is learning a word from an adult who speaks an unfamiliar dialect. Children whose home dialect is African American English (AAE; a dialect of  English) are often placed in contexts replete with dialect mismatch since AAE varies in multiple features with General American English (GAE; the dialect typically used in  classroom instruction, (Tegegne, 2015)). Research has shown that dialect mismatch can contribute to gaps in educational achievement for African American students (Fitton et al., 2021), potentially leading to further social disparities (World Literacy Foundation, 2022). However, social group construction can positively impact children’s performance (t-shirt colors) on a variety of tasks (for example, Master and Walton found that perceived group membership increased children’s motivation and learning, 2013) and could be used as a tool to mitigate mismatches. Here we asked how social group formation would impact word learning in dialect mismatch contexts. Specifically, using a task designed to establish social groups via shared/not shared interests, we examined how social group membership impacts children’s ability to learn new words in a less familiar dialect. We assessed word learning accuracy under conditions of shared and non-shared interest using both eye-tracking and pointing.