Experience with research paradigms relates to infants’ direction of preference

Abstract

Interpreting and predicting direction of preference in infant research has been a thorny issue for decades. Several factors have been proposed to account for familiarity versus novelty preferences, including age, length of exposure, and task complexity. The current study explores an additional dimension: experience with the experimental paradigm. We re-analyzed the data from 4 experiments on artificial grammar learning in 12-month-old infants run using the Head-turn Preference Procedure (HPP). Participants in these studies varied substantially in their number of laboratory visits. Results show that the number of HPP studies is related to direction of preference: infants with limited experience with the HPP setting were more likely to show familiarity preferences than infants who had amassed more experience with this paradigm. This evidence has important implications for the interpretation of experimental results: experience with a given method or, more broadly, with the lab environment, may affect infants' patterns of preferences.

e-Babylab: An Open-source Browser-based Tool for Unmoderated Online Developmental Studies

“…Thus, prior experience with the task, and the touchscreen paradigm, had long-lasting beneficial effects on reaction times when performing the task for the second time. The effect of prior experience with the task varied across ages and ranged between 0.18 and 0.68 s. A very recent study has similarly reported that experience with paradigms affects infants' behavior in the task: e.g., more experience with the head-turn preference paradigm (more lab visits) leads to smaller familiarity preference, i.e., smaller effect sizes, suggesting that prior experience with the task cumulates and modulates the learning outcome (Santolin, Garcia-Castro, Zettersten, Sebastian-Galles, & Saffran, 2021).…”

Six solutions for more reliable infant research

“…Work directly aimed at improving infant behavioral methods is complemented by other methodologically-related research. For example Santolin et al (2020) recently reported evidence that infants' experience with a paradigm is related to the direction of preference they show (i.e. whether infants attend more when they hear novel versus familiar stimuli).…”

Six solutions for more reliable infant research

“…Work directly aimed at improving infant behavioral methods is complemented by other methodologically-related research. For example Santolin et al (2020) recently reported evidence that infants' experience with a paradigm is related to the direction of preference they show (i.e. whether infants look more to novel or familiar stimuli).…”