Prediction by Young Autistic Children from Visual and Spoken Input.

Recent theoretical accounts suggest that differences in the processing of probabilistic events underlie the core and associated traits of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These theories hypothesize that autistic individuals are differentially impacted by disruptions in probabilistic input relative to neurotypical peers. According to this view, autistic individuals assign disproportionate weight to prediction errors such that novel input is overweighted relative to the aggregation of prior input; this is referred to as 'hyperplasticity' of learning.

The effect of volatility in linguistic input on prediction behavior in autistic toddlers.

Domain-general prediction differences have been posited as underlying many aspects of the cognitive-behavioral profile in autism. An interesting potential implication of such differences is hyperplasticity of learning-the idea that autistic individuals may privilege more recent input over the accumulation of prior learning. Because real world language input is highly variable, hyperplasticity could have serious ramifications for language learning.

Limited evidence of test-retest reliability in infant-directed speech preference in a large preregistered infant experiment.

Test-retest reliability-establishing that measurements remain consistent across multiple testing sessions-is critical to measuring, understanding, and predicting individual differences in infant language development. However, previous attempts to establish measurement reliability in infant speech perception tasks are limited, and reliability of frequently used infant measures is largely unknown. The current study investigated the test-retest reliability of infants' preference for infant-directed speech over adult-directed speech in a large sample (N = 158) in the context of the ManyBabies1 collaborative research project.

Becoming word meaning experts: Infants' processing of familiar words in the context of typical and atypical exemplars.

How do infants become word meaning experts? This registered report investigated the structure of infants' early lexical representations by manipulating the typicality of exemplars from familiar animal categories. 14- to 18-month-old infants (N = 84; 51 female; M = 15.7 months; race/ethnicity: 64% White, 8% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% Black, and 23% multiple categories; participating 2022-2023) were tested on their ability to recognize typical and atypical category exemplars after hearing familiar basic-level category labels.

Toddlers' prior social experience with speakers influences their word learning.

Toddlers prefer to learn from familiar adults, particularly their caregivers, and perform better on word learning tasks when taught by caregivers than by strangers. However, it remains unclear why toddlers learn better from caregivers than from strangers. One possibility is that toddlers are more receptive to learning from individuals whom they have found to be engaging in previous interactions.