Syntactic priming may be a key mechanism underlying children’s learning of novel words. Havron et al. (2019) exposed French-speaking children (ages 3 to 4) to a speaker biased by the use of either familiar verbs or nouns presented in the same syntactic context. This influenced participants’ interpretations of ambiguous novel words presented in the same syntactic frame. In Experiment 1, we successfully replicated Havron et al. with 77 French-speaking adults, using a web-based eye-tracking paradigm. Experiment 2 adapted this paradigm to English: Repeated exposure to a syntactic structure induced 102 English-speaking adults to update their expectations about the meanings of novel words. Our results indicate participants adapted to the specific linguistic structure used, not just the speaker’s tendency to mention actions or objects. These findings support the role of rapid adaptation during word learning. Experiments in progress investigate whether the English paradigm yields successful learning in 3- to 5-year-old children.

Face-to-face communication provides access to visual information that can support language processing. But do listenersautomatically seek social information without regard to the language processing task? Here, we present two eye-trackingstudies that ask whether listeners’ knowledge of word-object links changes how they actively gather a social cue to refer-ence (eye gaze) during real-time language processing. First, when processing familiar words, children and adults did notdelay their gaze shifts to seek a disambiguating gaze cue. When processing novel words, however, children and adultsfixated longer on a speaker who provided a gaze cue, which led to an increase in looking to the named object and lesslooking to the other objects in the scene. These results suggest that listeners use their knowledge of object labels whendeciding how to allocate visual attention to social partners, which in turn changes the visual input to language processingmechanisms.

This article reports a synthesis and meta-analysis of intervention studies investigating the effects of team-based learning on content knowledge outcomes. Team-based learning is a particular set of instructional components most often used in higher education classrooms. Authors of team-based learning reviews report that team-based learning improves students’ end of course grades, test performance, and classroom engagement. Students report that team-based learning is interesting, allows for deeper understanding of content, and prepares them more effectively for assessment and course performance. A total of 30 studies were located and synthesized. In total, 17 studies met criteria for a meta-analysis, yielding a mean effect size estimate of 0.55, p < 0.001 across all measures. Moderator analysis indicated that group size moderated the magnitude of effect to a statistically significant degree, with smaller group sizes contributing to additional effects. The meta-analysis is followed by a confirmatory synthesis of the remaining 13 studies. Implications for instruction incorporating the use of team-based learning are described.