Young people report increased reward or pleasure when they are able to learn words from the context of a sentence.
- From the context of a sentence, children and adolescents who participated in a study were able to learn and retain new words.
- They found the experience of successful learning pleasant and even felt pleasure.
- No evidence of age-related change during this developmental period or benefits for memory was observed.
Recent experiments have shown that adults experience a sense of reward when they successfully learn new words. This phenomenon is linked to a dopamine circuit in the brain, which typically lights up for external rewards, such as money. Additionally, the experience of reward facilitates long-term memory of words. “During adolescence, developmental changes are observed in the reward and motivation systems, as well as in the reading and language systems”, indicated researchers from the University of London (England). Faced with these developmental changes, they wondered whether children and adolescents felt the same way about learning and remembering new words.
Teenagers enjoy learning the meaning of new words
To answer their questions, scientists carried out a study published in the journal Developmental Science. As part of their work, they recruited 345 young children aged 10 to 18. Children and adolescents were given 40 self-paced trials, which involved matching two sentences to make sense of the new word they were learning. Participants had to find the meaning of a new word by making a prediction based on the context of the sentence. They were then asked to rate their emotions including confidence, happiness and excitement after each question.
According to the authors, children and adolescents managed to learn and remember words. In addition, they report greater pleasure when they succeed in learning new words, and this continues into adulthood. However, the team did not find evidence of age-related change during this developmental period, nor any benefits for memory.
“The experience of pleasure, an important signal that encourages us to enrich our vocabulary”
“Our results conclusively demonstrate that children find this learning intrinsically rewarding and do not need external rewards, such as validation. I believe that the experience of pleasure is an important signal that motivates us to seek new knowledge and enrich our vocabulary This helps us identify aspects of learning that children find interesting and, in the future, this could help us design more engaging programs. For example, in my lab we are currently evaluating. whether neurodivergent children, such as dyslexic children, experience reward in the same way”, has explained Saloni Krishnanco-author of the research.
