Young children struggle to learn new words presented on video, but adult co-viewers can support them by providing scaffolds that explicitly connect the video and real world. In this study, we asked whether scaffolding facilitates children’s symbolic understanding of the video, such that they will subsequently transfer labels from video to real referents. Sixty-three 30-month-olds and 61 36-month-olds participated in a series of three word learning trials in one of three conditions. In the supportive condition, an in-person adult explicitly drew connections between each on-screen object and the corresponding real object in the room with the child. In the unsupportive condition, the in-person adult provided similar-length statements about the objects but did not draw connections between them. In the partial scaffold condition, the in-person adult provided the supportive scaffolds for the first two trials and the unsupportive version for the third trial. At 30 months, children selected the correct object on the third trial more often in the supportive than the unsupportive scaffold condition, and performance in the partial scaffold condition fell in between. At 36 months, performance on the third trial did not differ across conditions. The results showed that experiencing the scaffold twice was not enough to reliably support 30-month-olds in learning to think symbolically on the third trial; rather, they appeared to rely on the adult to connect the video image with its specific real-world referent. At 36 months, however, children did not rely on the adult scaffold to apply the video label to the real-world objects.

幼儿努力学习视频中呈现的新单词，但成年共同观众可以通过提供明确连接视频和现实世界的支架来支持他们。在这项研究中，我们询问脚手架是否有助于儿童对视频的符号理解，以便他们随后将标签从视频转移到真正的参考对象。63 名 30 个月大的婴儿和 61 名 36 个月大的婴儿在三种情况中的一种情况下参加了一系列三个单词学习试验。在支持条件下，成人明确地在屏幕上的每个对象与房间中相应的真实对象之间建立联系。在不支持的情况下，面对面的成年人提供了关于物体的相似长度的陈述，但没有在它们之间建立联系。在部分脚手架条件下，面对面的成年人为前两次试验提供了支持性支架，为第三次试验提供了非支持性支架。在 30 个月时，儿童在第三次试验中在支持性支架条件下选择正确对象的频率高于非支持性支架条件，而在部分支架条件下的表现则介于两者之间。在 36 个月时，第三次试验的表现在不同条件下没有差异。结果表明，两次体验支架不足以可靠地支持 30 个月大的孩子在第三次尝试中学习象征性思考；相反，他们似乎依赖成年人将视频图像与其特定的现实世界参照物联系起来。然而，在 36 个月大时，儿童并不依赖成人支架将视频标签应用于现实世界的物体。