title: Twenty-Five Years Using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm to Study Language Acquisition: What Have We Learned?
abstract: The intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) has proven to be a revolutionary method for the examination of infants' emerging language knowledge. In the IPLP, infants' language comprehension is measured by their differential visual fixation to two images presented side-by-side when only one of the images matches an accompanying linguistic stimulus. Researchers can examine burgeoning knowledge in the areas of phonology, semantics, syntax, and morphology in infants not yet speaking. The IPLP enables the exploration of the underlying mechanisms involved in language learning and illuminates how infants identify the correspondences between language and referents in the world. It has also fostered the study of infants' conceptions of the dynamic events that language will express. Exemplifying translational science, the IPLP is now being investigated for its clinical and diagnostic value.
authors.affiliation: School of Education, and Departments of Psychology and Linguistic and Cognitive Science, University of Delaware.
authors.forename: Roberta Michnick
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Golinkoff
authors.affiliation: School of Foreign Languages; Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China weiyima@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Weiyi
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Department of Early Childhood and Art Education, School of Education, Brooklyn College, the City University of New York.
authors.forename: Lulu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Temple University.
authors.forename: Kathy
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hirsh-Pasek
keywords: emergent coalition model; intermodal preferential looking paradigm; language acquisition