title: Can we dissociate contingency learning from social learning in word acquisition by 24-month-olds?
abstract: We compared 24-month-old children's learning when their exposure to words came either in an interactive (coupled) context or in a nonsocial (decoupled) context. We measured the children's learning with two different methods: one in which they were asked to point to the referent for the experimenter, and the other a preferential looking task in which they were encouraged to look to the referent. In the pointing test, children chose the correct referents for words encountered in the coupled condition but not in the decoupled condition. In the looking time test, however, they looked to the targets regardless of condition. We explore the explanations for this and propose that the different response measures are reflecting two different kinds of learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America. colinbannard@gmail.com
authors.forename: Colin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bannard
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male