The impact of stimulus 'value' in infant novelty preference
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Updated: Oct 11, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
R G Najm-Briscoe1, D G Thomas, S Overton
1Department of Psychology, 215 N. Murray, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.
Abstract:
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.
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