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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2025.1469550

The effect of speaker reliability on word learning in children: A replication study

Provisionally accepted
Ishanti Gangopadhyay Ishanti Gangopadhyay *Lillian Peters Lillian Peters
  • Indiana University, Bloomington, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study aimed to replicate the in-person speaker reliability research conducted by Gangopadhyay & Kaushanskaya (2022) using a fully online methodology. Twenty children aged 4 to 6 years participated in a live video call with the experimenter and completed virtual tasks on a web-based platform. The experimental task mirrored that used in Gangopadhyay & Kaushanskaya (2022), where children learned novel words from both a reliable and an unreliable speaker, followed by testing children's novel word retention. Consistent with G&K's findings, children performed above chance in both conditions and retained novel labels taught by both speakers. These preliminary results suggest that speaker reliability is a robust cue, showing consistent effects across different data collection methods. Thus, online data collection shows promise for producing viable results and improving participation by making research more accessible and flexible. Nonetheless, further studies are necessary to explore its strengths and limitations, especially in the context of research involving children.

    Keywords: Speaker reliability, Online Testing, word learning, Children, Replication

    Received: 15 Oct 2024; Accepted: 03 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Gangopadhyay and Peters. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ishanti Gangopadhyay, Indiana University, Bloomington, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.