Summaries of the Selected Articles
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Summaries of the Selected Articles
Article 1: “Infants’ Selectively Pay Attention to the Information They Receives from a Native Speaker of Their Language” by Hanna Marno, Bahia Guellai, Yamil Vidal, Julia Franzoi, Marina Nespor and Jacques Mehler, Published on 03 August 2016.
In the article, the authors explore the issue of infants who show selective attention to information presented by a native speaker. The authors found out that discrimination and phonetic contrast on mother tongue are portrayed by children as early as five-months old. However, with age, children increase sensitivity to native-language phonetic while non-native phonetic perceptions sensitivity decreases (Marno et al, 2016). They argue that selective attention does not only apply to language alone but to objects such as food, which are presented and commented positively by native speakers. At the age of five years, it is more apparent as children prefer befriending native speakers compared to those with foreign accents (Marno et al, 2016). The authors argue that on social preference basis, children categorize others by gender, age, and ethnic origin. However, racial boundaries cannot be utterly drawn as children will prefer native accent speakers.
The authors made various experiments were carried out to confirm this assumption. At first, confusion task was conducted, and participants were required to watch faces and listen to simple statements. Eventually, they were asked to remember the faces that produced reports, and their answers were erroneous due to non-conscious categorization. Faces of individuals with same social categories were confused easily. The experiment was important as it was possible to predict and guide future social interactions. It is so as children select and imitate behavior from native speakers.
The research made two more experiments was done on eighty 12- and 5-months old monolingual Italian infants. The test involved observing objects presented by Italian and Slovenian speakers. 12 months was appropriate as at this age children have heightened sensitivity to an object property. During familiarization stage, all infants had equal attention to both speakers (Marno et al, 2016). The 12-moths old had a significant novelty effect while the 5-moths old did not. However, in both cases, infants preferred object that was initially presented by native speakers. As a result, 28 out of 40 12-months old and 29 out of 40 5-moths old stared longer at objects presented by native speakers. It was concluded that language is a viable signal in guiding infants’ social learning.
Article 2: “The Role of Interactional Quality in Learning from Touch Screens during Infancy: Context Matters” by Elizabeth Zack and Rachel Barr
In this article, the two authors explore how babies are good at interacting with real objects. When it comes to three-dimensional and two-dimensional objects on the screen, they encounter problems as they have to internalize the information to the physical world. As a result, those who are not lucky to meet physical objects may not fully understand how to translate objects on the screen to look physical (Zack & Barr, 2016). According to the authors, it is due to this reason that it is important to allow the infants to acquire real exposure to facilitate understanding on objects on the screen.
High quality and average quality of interaction can serve the purpose of intensifying rate of understanding. In an experiment conducted on 15-months old, mothers took five minutes to illustrate to their infants that real buttons on their toys function the same way as virtual buttons on a screen (Zack & Barr, 2016). As a result of the maternal interaction, those children managed to interpret three-dimensional as well as two-dimensional objects. According to the authors, the quality of interaction determined the rate of transfer of knowledge. Those infants that acquired high-quality communication had a faster rate of knowledge transfer compared to those that had moderate as well as weak interaction quality.
The authors note that in the contemporary world, there is heightened use of iPads, screen touch phones as well as tablets. Due to increased technology, infants get exposure to these objects. On the other hand, parents have little time to expose their children to internalization on how to use these gadgets. In some cases, children manage to maneuver and use them individually. However, studies show that when parents interact with infants with the aim of helping them use the touch screened, those children acquire 19 times cognitive ability compared to those who learn without parental guidance (Zack & Barr, 2016). It is the same interaction that facilitates language as well as behavior acquisition.
References
Marno, H., Guellai, B., Vidal, Y., Franzoi, J., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (2016). Infants’ Selectively Pay Attention to the Information They Receives from a Native Speaker of Their Language. Retrieved from, < http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01150/full> 16 September 2016
Zack, E., & Barr, R. (2016). The Role of Interactional Quality in Learning from Touch Screens during Infancy: Context Matters. Retrieved from, < http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01264/full> 16 September 2016