Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, USA.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Dev Sci. 2017 Nov;20(6). doi: 10.1111/desc.12456. Epub 2017 Jan 16.
Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, as illustrated in studies of infant walking, object permanence, intention understanding, and so forth. Using language as a model system, we compared the speech of 40 mothers to their 13-month-old infants during structured play and naturalistic home routines. The contrasting methods yielded unique portrayals of infant language experiences, while simultaneously underscoring cross-situational correspondence at an individual level. Infants experienced substantially more total words and different words per minute during structured play than they did during naturalistic routines. Language input during structured play was consistently dense from minute to minute, whereas language during naturalistic routines showed striking fluctuations interspersed with silence. Despite these differences, infants' language experiences during structured play mirrored the peak language interactions infants experienced during naturalistic routines, and correlations between language inputs in the two conditions were strong. The implications of developmental methods for documenting the nature of experiences and individual differences are discussed.
方法可以有力地影响关于婴儿经验和学习的结论。与基于结构化任务的研究相比，自然观察数据可能会描绘出学习和发展的截然不同的图景，这在婴儿行走、物体持久性、意图理解等方面的研究中得到了体现。我们以语言为模型系统，比较了 40 位母亲在结构化游戏和自然家庭日常活动中与 13 个月大婴儿的对话。对比方法独特地描绘了婴儿的语言体验，同时强调了个体水平上的跨情境对应。在结构化游戏中，婴儿经历的总词汇量和每分钟的不同词汇量明显多于自然日常活动。结构化游戏中的语言输入每分钟都很密集，而自然日常活动中的语言则有明显的波动，中间穿插着沉默。尽管存在这些差异，但婴儿在结构化游戏中的语言体验反映了婴儿在自然日常活动中经历的高峰语言互动，两种情况下的语言输入之间的相关性很强。讨论了发展方法对记录经验和个体差异性质的影响。
