Children know more about language than they can tell us in words. We “trick” young children into giving us responses by using three simple but ingenious methods that make use of what even infants are fantastic at -- looking and playing! By watching where children look and how they interact with objects they can show us what they know and understand about language.

The Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP)

The IPLP is a method developed in our own laboratory by Dr. Roberta Golinkoff and her colleague at Temple University, Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. In the IPLP, a single large screen TV displays two images, side-by-side with accompanying audio. The premise is simple: If children understand what they are hearing, they should spend more time looking at the side of the TV screen that matches the audio. For example, children see an apple and a flower side by side on the TV. When children hear, “Where's the apple? Do you see the apple?” they should look longer at the side of the screen displaying the apple if they understand the word “apple.” If they don't understand the word, they should look equally to both sides of the screen.

In addition to testing simple noun and verb comprehension (e.g., “Where's the flower?” or “Where's jumping?”), using the IPLP we can also teach children a word for a new object or action during the course of the lab visit or test children's understanding of various sentence types.

Interactive Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IIPLP)

The IIPLP follows the same premise as the IPLP: Children will want to look at what matches the language they are hearing. However, with this method, children are given the opportunity to handle the objects and interact socially with the experimenter. First, the child is given the chance to explore the test objects. Then the child watches as the experimenter manipulates and labels the object (e.g., “Look! It's a blicket! Oh boy! It's a blicket!”). Instead of displaying images on a television screen, the objects are then fixed to a wooden flip-board and the child is asked to look at the labeled object (e.g., “Find the blicket!”). If children have successfully learned the name for the object, they will look longer at the target object than at the distracter object.

Habituation Paradigm

The Habituation Paradigm makes use of infants' tendency to look at an image until they are bored with it and then to re-engage when they see something new. In this procedure, infants are repeatedly presented with the same image on a computer monitor. In the beginning, infants typically look at the screen for a long time, but as the image is displayed over and over again, they typically look less and less. After their looking time has decreased, we present a new image on the screen. If infants recognize this image as new and different, they should perk up and look at the screen for a longer time. However, if infants cannot tell the difference between the old and new image they should remain bored. This method can be used to find out how infants are understanding and grouping the events that they see.