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Infants' understanding of model objects and modeled actions should not be assumed

Infants' understanding of model objects and modeled actions should not be assumed It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of. (Jean Rostand) We agree with Mandler that psychologists must strive to fully understand the basis for infants’ behavior on new tasks created to assess aspects of their development. It was precisely this goal that motivated our analyses of infants’ performance on the generalized imitation task, and we believe that all researchers who use toy models to assess infants’ categorization and language development should critically consider the issues we have raised in our recent work. Mandler contends that our application of the preferential looking paradigm to the assessment of symbolic comprehension (or just plain ‘comprehension’) is misguided, given that infants have little motivation to look to the matching video. We first address this criticism, then we respond to several other key points raised in her thoughtful commentary. The preferential looking task is structurally equivalent to comprehension tasks or match‐to‐sample triads routinely used with 14‐ to 18‐month‐old infants to assess object word comprehension (e.g. Booth & Waxman, 2003 ; Mervis, Mervis, Johnson & Bertrand, 1992 ; Smith, 2003 ; Smith, Jones, Landau, Gershkoff‐Stowe & Samuelson, 2002 ). Infants are asked, ‘Where's the X?’ http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Developmental Science Wiley

Infants' understanding of model objects and modeled actions should not be assumed

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References (13)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
1363-755X
eISSN
1467-7687
DOI
10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00418.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of. (Jean Rostand) We agree with Mandler that psychologists must strive to fully understand the basis for infants’ behavior on new tasks created to assess aspects of their development. It was precisely this goal that motivated our analyses of infants’ performance on the generalized imitation task, and we believe that all researchers who use toy models to assess infants’ categorization and language development should critically consider the issues we have raised in our recent work. Mandler contends that our application of the preferential looking paradigm to the assessment of symbolic comprehension (or just plain ‘comprehension’) is misguided, given that infants have little motivation to look to the matching video. We first address this criticism, then we respond to several other key points raised in her thoughtful commentary. The preferential looking task is structurally equivalent to comprehension tasks or match‐to‐sample triads routinely used with 14‐ to 18‐month‐old infants to assess object word comprehension (e.g. Booth & Waxman, 2003 ; Mervis, Mervis, Johnson & Bertrand, 1992 ; Smith, 2003 ; Smith, Jones, Landau, Gershkoff‐Stowe & Samuelson, 2002 ). Infants are asked, ‘Where's the X?’

Journal

Developmental Science – Wiley

Published: Jul 1, 2005

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