Experience with research paradigms relates to infants’ direction of preference

Chiara Santolin  Gonzalo Garcia Garcia  Martin Zettersten  Nuria Sebastian‐Galles  Jenny R. Saffran
First published: 27 October 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12372

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 reanalyzed 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 laboratory environment may affect infants’ patterns of preferences.

This project is co-financed by the European Union Regional Development Fund within the framework of the ERDF Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020 with a grant of 50% of total cost eligible.