How does one assess developmental change when the measures themselves change with development? Most developmental studies of word learning use either looking (infants) or pointing (preschoolers and older). With little empirical evidence of the relationship between the two measures, developmental change is difficult to assess. This paper analyzes 914 pointing, looking children (451 female, varied ethnicities, 2.5–6.5 years, dates: 2009–2019) in 36 word‐ or sound‐learning experiments with two‐alternative test trials. Looking proportions and pointing accuracy correlated strongly (r = .7). Counter to the “looks first” hypothesis, looks were not sensitive to incipient knowledge that pointing missed: when pointing is at chance, looking proportions are also. Results suggest one possible path forward for assessing continuous developmental change. Methodological best practices are discussed.

中文翻译：

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连接孩子：学龄前儿童单词学习中的强烈的指向相关性及其对语言发展连续性的影响


当衡量标准本身随着发展而变化时，如何评估发展变化？大多数单词学习使用的发展研究任何一个看（婴儿）或指（学龄前儿童及以上）。由于这两种措施之间关系的经验证据很少，因此很难评估发展变化。本文分析了 914 名指着、看的儿童（451 名女性，不同种族，2.5-6.5 岁，日期：2009-2019 年），进行了 36 个单词或声音学习实验，并进行了两种选择的测试试验。观看比例和指向准确度密切相关（ r = .7)。与“外观优先”的假设相反，外观对指向所错过的早期知识并不敏感：当指向是偶然的时，外观的比例也是如此。结果提出了评估持续发展变化的一种可能的前进道路。讨论了方法论的最佳实践。