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The impact of stimulus ‘value’ in infant novelty preference
Author(s) -
NajmBriscoe Rima G.,
Thomas David G.,
Overton Sherry
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/1098-2302(200011)37:3<176::aid-dev5>3.0.co;2-k
Subject(s) - novelty , stimulus (psychology) , psychology , cognitive psychology , audiology , developmental psychology , social psychology , medicine
Various factors have been identified that influence the robust phenomenon of novelty preference in infants. The present study consisted of two experiments that investigated whether conditioned ‘value’ is another variable that influences infants' preferences. In Experiment 1, novelty preference was established to simple tones despite the tones differing only in frequency. In Experiment 2, novelty preference was manipulated by pairing a primary reinforcer with the familiarization tone such that the conditioned value overrode novelty preference. The findings raise questions about the universality of predicting infants' preferences solely on the foundation of amount of stimulus experience. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 37: 176–185, 2000