RESUMEN

The psychological mechanisms underlying infants' selective social learning are currently a subject of controversy. The main goal of the present study was to contribute data to this debate by investigating whether domain-specific or domain-general abilities guide infants' selectivity. Eighteen-month-olds observed a reliable and an unreliable speaker, and then completed a forced-choice word learning paradigm, two theory of mind tasks, and an associative learning task. Results revealed that infants showed sensitivity to the verbal competence of the speaker. Additionally, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to learn from the unreliable speaker. No link was observed between selective social learning and associative learning skills. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that socio-cognitive abilities are linked to infants' selective social learning.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) is a screening questionnaire for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Previous findings have confirmed the M-CHAT's sensitivity and specificity across several cultures, yet few studies have considered M-CHAT scores as a distributed trait in a sample of typical infants. The current study examined how the M-CHAT predicts concurrent word learning (experiment 1) as well as socio-emotional understanding (experiment 2) in 18-month-old infants. Results demonstrated that the number of items endorsed on the M-CHAT negatively correlated with the proportion of trials on which infants looked at a toy named by the experimenter as well as performance on the word learning task. In experiment 2, high scores on the M-CHAT correlated with less instrumental helping, less imitation, and a smaller productive vocabulary size.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Infants can detect individuals who demonstrate emotions that are incongruent with an event and are less likely to trust them. However, the nature of the mechanisms underlying this selectivity is currently subject to controversy. The objective of this study was to examine whether infants' socio-cognitive and associative learning skills are linked to their selective trust. A total of 102 14-month-olds were exposed to a person who demonstrated congruent or incongruent emotional referencing (e.g., happy when looking inside an empty box), and were tested on their willingness to follow the emoter's gaze. Knowledge inference and associative learning tasks were also administered. It was hypothesized that infants would be less likely to trust the incongruent emoter and that this selectivity would be related to their associative learning skills, and not their socio-cognitive skills. The results revealed that infants were not only able to detect the incongruent emoter, but were subsequently less likely to follow her gaze toward an object invisible to them. More importantly, infants who demonstrated superior performance on the knowledge inference task, but not the associative learning task, were better able to detect the person's emotional incongruency. These findings provide additional support for the rich interpretation of infants' selective trust.

RESUMEN

Although there is mounting evidence that selective social learning begins in infancy, the psychological mechanisms underlying this ability are currently a controversial issue. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether theory of mind abilities and statistical learning skills are related to infants' selective social learning. Seventy-seven 18-month-olds were first exposed to a reliable or an unreliable speaker and then completed a word learning task, two theory of mind tasks, and a statistical learning task. If domain-general abilities are linked to selective social learning, then infants who demonstrate superior performance on the statistical learning task should perform better on the selective learning task, that is, should be less likely to learn words from an unreliable speaker. Alternatively, if domain-specific abilities are involved, then superior performance on theory of mind tasks should be related to selective learning performance. Findings revealed that, as expected, infants were more likely to learn a novel word from a reliable speaker. Importantly, infants who passed a theory of mind task assessing knowledge attribution were significantly less likely to learn a novel word from an unreliable speaker compared to infants who failed this task. No such effect was observed for the other tasks. These results suggest that infants who possess superior social-cognitive abilities are more apt to reject an unreliable speaker as informant. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/zuuCniHYzqo.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

In order to address gaps in the literature surrounding the acquisition of translation equivalents (TEs) in young bilinguals, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, TEs were measured in the expressive vocabularies of thirty-four French-English bilinguals at 1;4, 1;10, and 2;6 using the MacArthur Bates CDI. Children's acquisition of TEs occurred gradually, with more balanced ratios of exposure and vocabulary associated with larger proportions of TEs at each wave. Experiment 2 compared a direct measure of TE comprehension with parent report of the same set of words. Results showed that parents may over-report children's TE comprehension, as our sample of two-year-old French-English bilinguals (n = 20) comprehended fewer TEs on a direct measure of receptive vocabulary than parents reported on the vocabulary checklist. The present study provides an original contribution to the literature on bilingual vocabulary development by employing both a longitudinal design and a direct measure of TE comprehension.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

The mastery of two languages provides bilingual speakers with cognitive benefits over monolinguals, particularly on cognitive flexibility and selective attention. However, extant research is limited to comparisons between monolinguals and bilinguals at a single point in time. This study investigated whether growth in bilingual proficiency, as shown by an increased number of translation equivalents (TEs) over a 7-month period, improves executive function. We hypothesized that bilingual toddlers with a larger increase of TEs would have more practice in switching across lexical systems, boosting executive function abilities. Expressive vocabulary and TEs were assessed at 24 and 31 months of age. A battery of tasks, including conflict, delay, and working memory tasks, was administered at 31 months. As expected, we observed a task-specific advantage in inhibitory control in bilinguals. More important, within the bilingual group, larger increases in the number of TEs predicted better performance on conflict tasks but not on delay tasks. This unique longitudinal design confirms the relation between executive function and early bilingualism.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Given that biological motion is both detected and preferred early in life, we tested the hypothesis that biological motion might be instrumental to infants' differentiation of animate and inanimate categories. Infants were primed with either point-light displays of realistic biological motion, random motion, or schematic biological motion of an unfamiliar shape. After being habituated to these displays, 12-month-old infants categorized animals and vehicles as well as furniture and vehicles with the sequential touching task. The findings indicated that infants primed with point-light displays of realistic biological motion showed better categorization of animates than those exposed to random or schematic biological motion. These results suggest that human biological motion might be one of the motion cues that provide the building blocks for infants' concept of animacy.

Asunto(s)