Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Biographic Data
| ID | 3842383 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kathy Hirsh-Pasek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kathy |
| FAMILY NAME | Hirsh-Pasek |
| SIGNATURE | HIRSH-PASEK K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Temple University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 94 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Play-based learning for elementary classrooms
In recent years, states throughout the U.S. have started mandating the incorporation of playful learning in public schools. However, translating policy into practice remains a significant challenge. Researchers from the Active Playful Learning (APL) project highlight how their one-on-one coaching program supports teachers in implementing small, sustainable pedagogical shifts that foster playful and meaningful learning environments. Grounded in a …
Playful learning in Spanish early childhood education: Teachers’ attitudes and challenges
Across the globe, there is growing concern over ‘schoolification’ in early childhood education (ECE) – a trend that emphasizes high-stakes testing, narrowly defined learning goals, and rigid curriculum standards. Spain is no exception; the revision and reform of Spain's early childhood curriculum towards more child- and play-centered pedagogy is ongoing. This study examined determinants of teachers’ attitudes and challenges regarding playful lear…
For preschoolers, word knowledge falls on a continuum: A novel framework for capturing the incremental process of word learning
In gaining word knowledge, children’s semantic representations are initially imprecise before becoming gradually refined. We developed and tested a framework for a digital receptive vocabulary assessment that captured varied levels of representation as children learn words. At pre-test and post-test, children selected one of four images to match a word’s meaning: a correct target, a conceptually-related foil, a thematically-related foil, and a ph…
Enhancing teacher-child engagement and promoting early learning with playful learning landscapes
The unanticipated side effects of an attachment intervention: Parents ask higher quality questions
Research suggests foster children are at risk for poor language skills. One intervention, attachment and biobehavioral catch-up (ABC), was shown to successfully improve not only young foster children's attachment to their parents, but also their receptive vocabulary skills (Bernard et al., 2017; Raby et al., 2019). Given that language acquisition is intricately linked to parents' sensitive interactions with their children, we ask whether the ABC …
Investigating the contributions of active, playful learning to student interest and educational outcomes
A growing body of evidence from the science of learning demonstrates the educational effectiveness of active, playful learning. Connections are emerging between this pedagogy and the broad set of skills that it promotes in learners, but potential mechanisms behind these relations remain unexplored. This paper offers a commentary based on the science of learning and interest development literature, suggesting that interest may mediate the relation…
From green to turquoise: Exploring age and socioeconomic status in the acquisition of color terms
Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES (under-resourced vs advantaged) might impact color name acquisition of preschool children. The results c…
What’s in a distraction? The effect of parental cell phone use on parents’ and children’s question-asking
Although questions fuel children's learning, adult cell phone use may preoccupy parents, affecting the frequency of questions parents and children ask and answer. We ask whether parental cell phone use will lead to a decrease in the number of questions children and parents ask one another while playing with a novel toy. Fifty-seven parent-child dyads ( M age = 48.72 months, SD = 6.53, 28 girls; 84.2% White) were randomly assigned to a cell phone,…
Within and Across Language Predictors of Word Learning Processes in Dual Language Learners
This study investigated the relation between Dual Language Learners’ (N = 90) vocabulary and grammar comprehension and word learning processes in preschool (aged 3-through-5 years). Of interest was whether: (a) performance in Spanish correlated with performance in English within each domain; and (b) comprehension predicted novel word learning within and across languages. Dual-language experience was evaluated as a potential moderator. Hierarchica…
Where language meets attention: How contingent interactions promote learning
Leslie Rescorla (1945–2020)
Memorializes Leslie Rescorla (1945-2020). Rescorla, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Class of 1897 Professor of Science Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College, passed away in Havertown, PA on October 12, 2020. Rescorla, who was born in Washington, DC on August 15, 1945, came to Bryn Mawr in 1985; where she taught in the Psychology Department and directed the College's Phebe Anna Thorne School and, until 2018, its Child study Institute. For many years …
Piecing together the role of a spatial assembly intervention in preschoolers’ spatial and mathematics learning: Influences of gesture, spatial language, and socioeconomic status
Spatial skills are associated with mathematics skills, but it is unclear if spatial training transfers to mathematics skills for preschoolers, especially from underserved communities. The current study tested (a) whether spatial training benefited preschoolers' spatial and mathematics skills, (b) if the type of feedback provided during spatial training differentially influenced children's spatial and mathematics skills, and (c) if the spatial tra…
Language Matters: Denying the Existence of the 30-Million-Word Gap Has Serious Consequences
Sperry, Sperry, and Miller (2018) aim to debunk what is called the 30-million-word gap by claiming that children from lower income households hear more speech than Hart and Risley (1995) reported. We address why the 30-million-word gap should not be abandoned, and the importance of retaining focus on the vital ingredient to language learning—quality speech directed to children rather than overheard speech, the focus of Sperry et al.'s argument. T…
Novel word learning at 21 months predicts receptive vocabulary outcomes in later childhood
Several aspects of early language skills, including parent-report measures of vocabulary, phoneme discrimination, speech segmentation, and speed of lexical access predict later childhood language outcomes. To date, no studies have examined the long-term predictive validity of novel word learning. We examined whether individual differences in novel word learning at 21 months predict later childhood receptive vocabulary outcomes rather than general…
Syntactic cues to the noun and verb distinction in Mandarin child-directed speech
The syntactic structure of sentences in which a new word appears may provide listeners with cues to that new word’s form class. In English, for example, a noun tends to follow a determiner ( a/ an/ the), while a verb precedes the morphological inflection [ing]. The presence of these markers may assist children in identifying a word’s form class and thus glean some information about its meaning. This study examined whether Mandarin, a language tha…
The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children
This Clinical Report was reaffirmed January 2025. Children need to develop a variety of skill sets to optimize their development and manage toxic stress. Research demonstrates that developmentally appropriate play with parents and peers is a singular opportunity to promote the social-emotional, cognitive, language, and self-regulation skills that build executive function and a prosocial brain. Furthermore, play supports the formation of the safe,…
Shape up: An eye-tracking study of preschoolers’ shape name processing and spatial development
Learning the names of geometric shapes is at the intersection of early spatial, mathematical, and language skills, all important for school-readiness and predictors of later abilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated whether socioeconomic status (SES) influenced children's processing of shape names and whether differences in processing were predictive of later spatial skills. Three-year-olds (N = 79) wi…
Guided Play: Principles and Practices
Competing trends in early childhood education emphasize the need for strong curricular approaches and for unfettered exploration. We propose an approach to early learning that avoids this false dichotomy: guided play. Guided play takes advantage of children’s natural abilities to learn through play by allowing them to express their autonomy within a prepared environment and with adult scaffolding. We provide examples of how guided-play situations…
Can a microwave heat up coffee? How English- and Japanese-speaking children choose subjects in lexical causative sentences
Languages differ greatly in how they express causal events. In languages like Japanese, the subjects of causative sentences, or causers , are generally animate and intentional, whereas in other languages like English, causers range widely from animate beings to inanimate objects (e.g. Wolff, Jeon & Li, 2009). This paper explores when children learn to represent cause in their native tongue and how this learning occurs over the course of developme…
Examining the Acquisition of Vocabulary Knowledge Depth Among Preschool Students
Well-developed lexical representations are important for reading comprehension, but there have been no prior attempts to track growth in the depth of knowledge of particular words. This article examines increases in depth of vocabulary knowledge in 4–5-year-old preschool students (n = 240) who participated in a vocabulary intervention that taught words through book reading and book-related play. At pretest and posttest, students defined words ver…
Putting Education in “Educational” Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning
Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but 5 years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications (“apps”) for tablets and smartphones. However, there is simply not the time, money, or resources available to evaluate each app as it enters the market. Thus, “educational” apps—the number of which, as of January 2015, stood at 80,000 in Apple’s App Stor…
(Baby)Talk to Me: The Social Context of Infant-Directed Speech and Its Effects on Early Language Acquisition
Since the mid-20th century, scientists have observed unique features in speech, facial expression, and content directed to infants and toddlers in comparison to speech directed to adults. Whereas much research has studied the characteristics of so-called infant-directed speech and speculated about its significance for language learning, research directly testing these ideas has been more limited until recently. Studies now suggest that infant-dir…
The Contribution of Early Communication Quality to Low-Income Children’s Language Success
The disparity in the amount and quality of language that low-income children hear relative to their more-affluent peers is often referred to as the 30-million-word gap. Here, we expand the literature about this disparity by reporting the relative contributions of the quality of early parent-child communication and the quantity of language input in 60 low-income families. Including both successful and struggling language learners from the National…
Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language
Language learning takes place in the context of social interactions, yet the mechanisms that render social interactions useful for learning language remain unclear. This study focuses on whether social contingency might support word learning. Toddlers aged 24–30 months (N = 36) were exposed to novel verbs in one of three conditions: live interaction training, socially contingent video training over video chat, and noncontingent video training (yo…
Taking Shape: Supporting Preschoolers' Acquisition of Geometric Knowledge Through Guided Play
Shape knowledge, a key aspect of school readiness, is part of early mathematical learning. Variations in how children are exposed to shapes may affect the pace of their learning and the nature of their shape knowledge. Building on evidence suggesting that child-centered, playful learning programs facilitate learning more than other methods, 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 70) were taught the properties of four geometric shapes using guided play, f…
Speaking Out for Language: Why Language Is Central to Reading Development
Although the National Early Literacy Panel report provides an important distillation of research, the manner in which the data are reported underrepresents the importance of language. Unlike other predictors with moderate associations with later reading, language exerts pervasive and indirect influences that are not described by the effect sizes used in the meta-analysis. Also, unlike code-related skills that develop rapidly during the years stud…
Young children and adults use lexical principles to learn new nouns
In two experiments, adults and children were tested in an object-selection task that examined whether Ss would (a) map a novel word onto a previously unnamed object and (b) extend the newly learned word to another exemplar. Experiment 3 was a control study. Ss overwhelmingly selected the novel object as the referent for the novel term, even though the new label was never explicitly linked to the novel object. Ss also extended the new term and all…
Examining the Acquisition of Vocabulary Knowledge Depth Among Preschool Students
Well-developed lexical representations are important for reading comprehension, but there have been no prior attempts to track growth in the depth of knowledge of particular words. This article examines increases in depth of vocabulary knowledge in 4–5-year-old preschool students (n = 240) who participated in a vocabulary intervention that taught words through book reading and book-related play. At pretest and posttest, students defined words ver…
Young children can extend motion verbs to point-light displays
In the first study using point-light displays (lights corresponding to the joints of the human body) to examine children's understanding of verbs, 3-year-olds were tested to see if they could perceive familiar actions that corresponded to motion verbs (e.g., walking). Experiment 1 showed that children could extend familiar motion verbs (e.g., walking and dancing) to videotaped point-light actions shown in the intermodal preferential looking parad…
Piecing together the role of a spatial assembly intervention in preschoolers’ spatial and mathematics learning: Influences of gesture, spatial language, and socioeconomic status
Spatial skills are associated with mathematics skills, but it is unclear if spatial training transfers to mathematics skills for preschoolers, especially from underserved communities. The current study tested (a) whether spatial training benefited preschoolers' spatial and mathematics skills, (b) if the type of feedback provided during spatial training differentially influenced children's spatial and mathematics skills, and (c) if the spatial tra…
Shape up: An eye-tracking study of preschoolers’ shape name processing and spatial development
Learning the names of geometric shapes is at the intersection of early spatial, mathematical, and language skills, all important for school-readiness and predictors of later abilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated whether socioeconomic status (SES) influenced children's processing of shape names and whether differences in processing were predictive of later spatial skills. Three-year-olds (N = 79) wi…
Embracing complexity: Rethinking the relation between play and learning: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013)
Lillard et al. (2013) concluded that pretend play is not causally related to child outcomes and charged that the field is subject to a play ethos, whereby research is tainted by a bias to find positive effects of play on child development. In this commentary, we embrace their call for a more solidly scientific approach to questions in this important area of study while offering 2 critiques of their analysis. First, we urge researchers to take a m…
The Metalinguistics of Fingerspelling: An Alternate Way to Increase Reading Vocabulary in Congenitally Deaf Readers
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, The Metalinguistics of Fingerspelling: An Alternate Way to Increase Reading Vocabulary in Congenitally Deaf Readers, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 455-474
Doggerel: Motherese in a new context
Four master–dog dyads were studied to determine whether the language that is used in speaking to dogs (doggerel) resembles the language that is used in speaking to children (motherese). The structural properties of doggerel are strikingly similar to those that have been reported for motherese. Certain differences between motherese and doggerel may arise in functional and social areas. The similarities between the two language registers suggest th…
Brown & Hanlon revisited: Mothers' sensitivity to ungrammatical forms
Brown & Hanlon (1970) reported that parents' explicit approval or disapproval of their child's utterances was not contingent on the well-formedness of that utterance. Rather, parents seemed attuned to the semantic value of their child's speech. Using 40 mother–child dyads, 10 from each of four age groups, 2–5 years, we replicated these results. We expanded upon this earlier work, however, to suggest that parents are not totally indifferent to the…
Clauses are perceptual units for young infants
The Metalinguistics of Fingerspelling: An Alternate Way to Increase Reading Vocabulary in Congenitally Deaf Readers
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, The Metalinguistics of Fingerspelling: An Alternate Way to Increase Reading Vocabulary in Congenitally Deaf Readers, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 455-474
How the prosodic cues in motherese might assist language learning
The function of motherese has become a pivotal issue in the language-learning literature. The current research takes the approach of asking whether the prosodic characteristics that are distinctive to motherese could play a special role in facilitating the acquisition of syntax. Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk, Cassidy, Druss & Kennedy (1987) showed that infants aged 0;7–0;10 are sensitive to prosodic cues that would help them segment the spe…
Pressure or challenge in preschool? how academic environments affect children
Highly academic environments have little benefit for children's academic skills, may dampen creative expression, and may create some anxiety. These effects, however, are less dramatic than some have claimed
Perception of acoustic correlates of major phrasal units by young infants
Young children and adults use lexical principles to learn new nouns
In two experiments, adults and children were tested in an object-selection task that examined whether Ss would (a) map a novel word onto a previously unnamed object and (b) extend the newly learned word to another exemplar. Experiment 3 was a control study. Ss overwhelmingly selected the novel object as the referent for the novel term, even though the new label was never explicitly linked to the novel object. Ss also extended the new term and all…
The Origins of Grammar: Evidence from Early Language Comprehension
Theories of language acquisition the intermodel preferential looking paradigm infants' perception of constituent structure single-word speakers' comprehension of word order young children's use of syntactic frames to derive meaning a coalition model of language comprehension
Young children can extend motion verbs to point-light displays
In the first study using point-light displays (lights corresponding to the joints of the human body) to examine children's understanding of verbs, 3-year-olds were tested to see if they could perceive familiar actions that corresponded to motion verbs (e.g., walking). Experiment 1 showed that children could extend familiar motion verbs (e.g., walking and dancing) to videotaped point-light actions shown in the intermodal preferential looking parad…
Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth
Why is it that the best and brightest of our children are arriving at college too burned out to profit from the smorgasbord of intellectual delights that they are offered? Why is it that some preschools and kindergartens have a majority of children struggling to master cognitive tasks that are inappropriate for their age? Why is playtime often considered to be time unproductively spent? This book contends that the answers to these questions stem …
Imageability predicts the age of acquisition of verbs in Chinese children
Verbs are harder to learn than nouns in English and in many other languages, but are relatively easy to learn in Chinese. This paper evaluates one potential explanation for these findings by examining the construct of imageability, or the ability of a word to produce a mental image. Chinese adults rated the imageability of Chinese words from the Chinese Communicative Development Inventory (Tardif et al. , in press). Imageability ratings were a re…
Speaking Out for Language: Why Language Is Central to Reading Development
Although the National Early Literacy Panel report provides an important distillation of research, the manner in which the data are reported underrepresents the importance of language. Unlike other predictors with moderate associations with later reading, language exerts pervasive and indirect influences that are not described by the effect sizes used in the meta-analysis. Also, unlike code-related skills that develop rapidly during the years stud…
Word Learning in Infant- and Adult-Directed Speech
Infant-directed speech (IDS), compared with adult-directed speech (ADS), is characterized by a slower rate, a higher fundamental frequency, greater pitch variations, longer pauses, repetitive intonational structures, and shorter sentences. Despite studies on the properties of IDS, there is no direct demonstration of its effects for word learning in infants. This study examined whether 21- and 27-month-old children learned novel words better in ID…
Taking Shape: Supporting Preschoolers' Acquisition of Geometric Knowledge Through Guided Play
Shape knowledge, a key aspect of school readiness, is part of early mathematical learning. Variations in how children are exposed to shapes may affect the pace of their learning and the nature of their shape knowledge. Building on evidence suggesting that child-centered, playful learning programs facilitate learning more than other methods, 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 70) were taught the properties of four geometric shapes using guided play, f…
Embracing complexity: Rethinking the relation between play and learning: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013)
Lillard et al. (2013) concluded that pretend play is not causally related to child outcomes and charged that the field is subject to a play ethos, whereby research is tainted by a bias to find positive effects of play on child development. In this commentary, we embrace their call for a more solidly scientific approach to questions in this important area of study while offering 2 critiques of their analysis. First, we urge researchers to take a m…
Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language
Language learning takes place in the context of social interactions, yet the mechanisms that render social interactions useful for learning language remain unclear. This study focuses on whether social contingency might support word learning. Toddlers aged 24–30 months (N = 36) were exposed to novel verbs in one of three conditions: live interaction training, socially contingent video training over video chat, and noncontingent video training (yo…
Putting Education in “Educational” Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning
Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but 5 years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications (“apps”) for tablets and smartphones. However, there is simply not the time, money, or resources available to evaluate each app as it enters the market. Thus, “educational” apps—the number of which, as of January 2015, stood at 80,000 in Apple’s App Stor…
(Baby)Talk to Me: The Social Context of Infant-Directed Speech and Its Effects on Early Language Acquisition
Since the mid-20th century, scientists have observed unique features in speech, facial expression, and content directed to infants and toddlers in comparison to speech directed to adults. Whereas much research has studied the characteristics of so-called infant-directed speech and speculated about its significance for language learning, research directly testing these ideas has been more limited until recently. Studies now suggest that infant-dir…
The Contribution of Early Communication Quality to Low-Income Children’s Language Success
The disparity in the amount and quality of language that low-income children hear relative to their more-affluent peers is often referred to as the 30-million-word gap. Here, we expand the literature about this disparity by reporting the relative contributions of the quality of early parent-child communication and the quantity of language input in 60 low-income families. Including both successful and struggling language learners from the National…
Guided Play: Principles and Practices
Competing trends in early childhood education emphasize the need for strong curricular approaches and for unfettered exploration. We propose an approach to early learning that avoids this false dichotomy: guided play. Guided play takes advantage of children’s natural abilities to learn through play by allowing them to express their autonomy within a prepared environment and with adult scaffolding. We provide examples of how guided-play situations…
Can a microwave heat up coffee? How English- and Japanese-speaking children choose subjects in lexical causative sentences
Languages differ greatly in how they express causal events. In languages like Japanese, the subjects of causative sentences, or causers , are generally animate and intentional, whereas in other languages like English, causers range widely from animate beings to inanimate objects (e.g. Wolff, Jeon & Li, 2009). This paper explores when children learn to represent cause in their native tongue and how this learning occurs over the course of developme…
Examining the Acquisition of Vocabulary Knowledge Depth Among Preschool Students
Well-developed lexical representations are important for reading comprehension, but there have been no prior attempts to track growth in the depth of knowledge of particular words. This article examines increases in depth of vocabulary knowledge in 4–5-year-old preschool students (n = 240) who participated in a vocabulary intervention that taught words through book reading and book-related play. At pretest and posttest, students defined words ver…
Shape up: An eye-tracking study of preschoolers’ shape name processing and spatial development
Learning the names of geometric shapes is at the intersection of early spatial, mathematical, and language skills, all important for school-readiness and predictors of later abilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated whether socioeconomic status (SES) influenced children's processing of shape names and whether differences in processing were predictive of later spatial skills. Three-year-olds (N = 79) wi…
The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children
This Clinical Report was reaffirmed January 2025. Children need to develop a variety of skill sets to optimize their development and manage toxic stress. Research demonstrates that developmentally appropriate play with parents and peers is a singular opportunity to promote the social-emotional, cognitive, language, and self-regulation skills that build executive function and a prosocial brain. Furthermore, play supports the formation of the safe,…
Psychology (38 works) · Linguistics (23 works) · Developmental psychology (20 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Cognitive psychology (16 works) · Language Development and Disorders (16 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (14 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (13 works) · Language acquisition (13 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (10 works)