Valid points and looks: Reliability and validity go hand‐in‐hand when improving infant methods

Zettersten, Martin; Pomper, Ron; Saffran, Jenny R.

doi:10.1002/icd.2326

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…Only if the volley of arrows hits the bullseye multiple times, could our metaphorical measure be considered reliable and valid. In other words, even with high measurement reliability, we cannot be certain that the measure indexes the desired effect of interest; in fact, by trying to maximise reliability of measures, we may end up undermining the validity of the measurement (Zettersten et al, 2022). Some of the solutions presented to improve the reliability and validity of infant research are to increase the number of trials, exclude low-quality data prior to analysis, utilise more sophisticated analyses (Byers-Heinlein et al, 2021), developing measurements collaboratively (Reinelt et al, 2022), using a greater variety of exemplars as stimuli (Visser et al, 2022;Zettersten et al, 2022) and using multiple outcome measures to measure the variable of interest (Havron, 2022;LoBue et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, even with high measurement reliability, we cannot be certain that the measure indexes the desired effect of interest; in fact, by trying to maximise reliability of measures, we may end up undermining the validity of the measurement (Zettersten et al, 2022). Some of the solutions presented to improve the reliability and validity of infant research are to increase the number of trials, exclude low-quality data prior to analysis, utilise more sophisticated analyses (Byers-Heinlein et al, 2021), developing measurements collaboratively (Reinelt et al, 2022), using a greater variety of exemplars as stimuli (Visser et al, 2022;Zettersten et al, 2022) and using multiple outcome measures to measure the variable of interest (Havron, 2022;LoBue et al, 2020). However, there are issues with many of these solutions: for example, Zettersten and colleagues (2022) argue that with too many trials, one may actually measure children's willingness to perform the task rather than the actual construct of interest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An examination of measures of young children's interest in natural object categories

Madhavan¹,

Malem²,

Ackermann³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Developmental research utilizes various different methodologies and measures to study the cognitive development of young children; however, the reliability and validity of such measures have been a critical issue in all areas of research practices. To address this problem, particularly in the area of research on infants’ interests, we examined the convergent validity of previously reported measures of children’s interests in natural object categories, as indexed by (1) parents’ estimation of their child’s interest in the categories, (2) extrinsic (overt choices in a task), (3) intrinsic (looking time toward objects), and (4) physiological (pupil dilation) responses to objects of different categories. Additionally, we also examined the divergent validity of all the aforementioned measures against the well-established and validated measure of parents’ estimations of children’s vocabulary knowledge. Children completed two tasks: (a) an eye-tracking task, where they were presented with images from a range of defined categories, which collected indices of looking time and pupillary activity; (b) a sticker-choice task, where they were asked to choose between two sticker-images from two different categories belonging to the range of categories assessed in the previous task. Parents completed two questionnaires to estimate (i) their child’s interests and (ii) vocabulary knowledge in the categories presented. We firstly analyzed the divergent validity between the two parent measures, and found a significant positive association between them. Our successive analyses showed no strong or significant associations between any of our measures, apart from a significant positive association between children’s looking time and parents’ estimations of children’s vocabulary knowledge. From our findings, we conclude that measures of infants’ interests thus far may index various components of interest in young children, and we also suggest next steps for further validation studies in infant research.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An examination of measures of young children's interest in natural object categories

Madhavan¹,

Malem²,

Ackermann³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Instead, we note the wealth of converging evidence that validates the range of dependent measures commonly used in VOE studies, including looking time, active exploration and anticipatory measures, and neurophysiological measures. We join others in encouraging researchers to employ multiple dependent measures in VOE methods to best assess infant cognition (e.g., Bremner & Dunn, 2020;Byers-Heinlein et al, 2021;Havron, 2022;LoBue et al, 2020;Zettersten et al, 2022).…”

Section: The Voe Methods Yields Consistent Results Across Dependent M...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, we note the wealth of converging evidence that validates the range of Construct validity of the violation-of-expectation method 8 dependent measures commonly used in VOE studies, including looking time, active exploration and anticipatory measures, and neurophysiological measures. We join others in encouraging researchers to employ multiple dependent measures in VOE methods to best assess infant cognition (e.g., Bremner & Dunn, 2020;Byers-Heinlein et al, 2021;Havron, 2022;LoBue et al, 2020;Zettersten et al, 2022) The violation-of-expectation method yields consistent results across variations in tasks Another common argument against the use of the VOE method often cites alternative explanations for infants' differential behaviors in VOE events that do not require infants to have specific knowledge or cognitive capacities (e.g., Cohen & Marks, 2002;Rivera et al, 1999;Schöner & Thelen, 2006;Heyes, 2014;Paulus, 2022). However, arguments along these lines often suffer from an aperture problem: they typically leverage these critiques against individual experiments or small sets of experiments, often positing a variety of different explanations for the results of individual studies, while failing to take into account the consistent patterns that emerge from larger sets of studies.…”

Section: The Violation-of-expectation Methods Yields Consistent Resul...mentioning

confidence: 98%

Great expectations: The construct validity of the violation‐of‐expectation method for studying infant cognition

Stahl

Kibbe

2022

Infant and Child Development

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The violation-of-expectation method has been used in thousands of studies examining the breadth and depth of preverbal infants' knowledge and cognitive capacities. In this commentary, we review evidence that supports the violation-of-expectation method as an important tool for infant research that has strong construct validity. We show that this method reveals infants' expectations, produces reliable results across study designs and stimuli, and is grounded in theories of learning. We support and encourage the use of this method to continue to unveil the scope and sophistication of infant cognition.

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“…Broadly speaking, with research on synchrony being no exception here, the developmental literature has recently been concerned with issues of validity, reliability, and generalizability of methodological choices ( Kominsky et al, 2022 ; Yarkoni, 2022 ; Zettersten et al, 2022 ). Namely, any measure of any psychological construct that cannot be observed or measured directly (e.g., an experience of synchrony, either induced or achieved through personal agency), even with the highest reported reliability, may fail the validity check or be deemed incomplete or narrowly conceived, even if we can measure individual differences with detail and precision.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the effect of synchronized movement on toddlers’ word learning

Bazhydai

Han²,

Thomas³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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The effect of interpersonal behavioral synchrony on children’s behavior is an emerging field rich with research potential. While studies demonstrate its effect on affiliative and prosocial outcomes, the role of synchronized movement on children’s specific learning outcomes has not yet been investigated experimentally. One possibility is that synchrony, as a coordinated social activity, encourages perceived social bonds, leading to heightened attention, and better information retention. Equally likely is that physiological, rather than social learning, mechanisms mediate the effect, given the previously demonstrated role of autonomic arousal in attentional fluctuations, cognitive engagement, problem solving, exploration, and curiosity. The present study investigated the behavioral and physiological effects of synchrony conceptualized as induced, interpersonal, behavioral, movement-based interaction, on word learning in 2.5-year-old children. In a laboratory experiment, toddlers engaged in either a synchronous or an asynchronous movement-based interaction with an adult experimenter while listening to an upbeat children’s song. After the (a)synchronous movement episode, the same experimenter engaged children in a word learning task. During the (a)synchrony and learning phases, children’s physiological arousal was continuously recorded, resulting in heart rate and skin conductance response measures. Following a caregiver-child free play break, children were tested on their novel word retention. The results indicated that children learned novel labels at equal rates during the learning phase in both conditions, and their retention at test did not differ between conditions: although above chance retention of novel labels was found only following the synchronous, but not the asynchronous episode, the cross-episode comparisons did not reach statistical significance. Physiological arousal indices following the (a)synchrony episode did not differ between conditions and did not predict better word learning, although skin conductance response was higher during the learning than the movement episode. This study contributes to our understanding of the underlying cognitive and physiological mechanisms of interpersonal behavioral synchrony in the knowledge acquisition domain and paves the way to future investigations.

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Valid points and looks: Reliability and validity go hand‐in‐hand when improving infant methods

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

An examination of measures of young children's interest in natural object categories

An examination of measures of young children's interest in natural object categories

Great expectations: The construct validity of the violation‐of‐expectation method for studying infant cognition

Investigating the effect of synchronized movement on toddlers’ word learning

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