Declarative learning of new real-words in primary and secondary school children: Evidence of consolidation over time

Abstract

Recent studies found evidence for improvements of declarative memories after a period of offline consolidation. Most of these studies investigated declarative learning using non-words stimuli. Little is known about consolidation effects in the acquisition of phonologically typical real-words in the native-language. The current study compared primary school children with secondary school children in recognition and delayed recall of novel real-words. The delayed recognition and recall tasks were administered both 15 minutes and 24 hours after training. The results revealed high recognition accuracy of the novel real-words after 15-min delay. In contrast, children's recall ability decreased at the first post-training delayed recall but significantly improved when children were re-tested one day later. Better overall performances were observed in secondary school children. The results of our semantic declarative memory task replicate and extend previous findings showing that children's retention of novel semantic-phonological representations is more robust following a period of sleep.