TranscribedText: 4. DQ 5. Create your initial post on the DQ 5 Discussion Board in response to the following: e There are many different opinions about how media, specifically TV and the Internet, impact children during toddlerhood either positively or negatively. Find at least one perspective on the topic (video, blog post, Facebook post) and share it. Do you agree or disagree with the opinion, and why? How does it match with what you now know from Roseberry et al. (2014)? CHILD DEVELOPMENT Child Development, May/June 2014, Volume 85, Number 3, Pages 956-970 Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language Sarah Roseberry Kathy Hirsh-Pasek University of Washington Temple University Roberta M. Golinkoff University of Delaware Language learning takes place in the context of social interactions, yet the mechanisms that render social inter- actions useful for learning language remain unclear. This study focuses on whether social contingency might support word learning. Toddlers aged 24-30 months (N = 36) were exposed to novel verbs in one of three conditions: live interaction training, socially contingent video training over video chat, and noncontingent video training (yoked video). Results suggest that children only learned novel verbs in socially contingent interactions (live interactions and video chat). This study highlights the importance of social contingency in interactions for language learning and informs the literature on learning through screen media as the first study to examine word learning through video chat technology. Young children's ability to learn language from researchers asked whether children would experi- video is a hotly debated topic. Some evidence sug- ence the same benefits in discriminating between gests that toddlers do not acquire words from screen foreign phonemes if their foreign language exposure media before age 3 (Robb, Richert, & Wartella, 2009; came through the video or the live speakers. Results Zimmerman, Christakis, & Meltzoff, 2007), whereas suggested that children who heard the speakers in a others find limited learning or recognition in the first live demonstration learned to discriminate between 3 years (Barr & Wyss, 2008; Kromar, Grela, & Lin, the foreign language sounds, whereas the video dis- 2007; Scofield & Williams, 2009). However, a com- play failed to confer this advantage. Another exam- mon finding in the literature is that children learn ple leads to the same conclusion, here, with word language better from a live person than from an learning. These researchers investigated children's equivalent video source (Kromar et al., 2007; Kuhl, ability to learn verbs, which some researchers have Tsao, & Liu, 2003; Reiser, Tessmer, & Phelps, 1984; suggested is more difficult to master than nouns Roseberry, Hirsh-Pasek, Parish-Morris, & Golinkoff, (Gentner, 1982; Gleitman, Cassidy, Nappa, Papa- 2009). What makes social interactions superior to fragou, & Trueswell, 2005; but see Choi & Gopnik, video presentations for children's language learning? 1995; Tardif, 1996). Could children learn these verbs We hypothesize that a key difference between the from mere exposure to televised displays? In a con- contexts of screen media and live interaction is social trolled experiment, 30-month-olds learned better contingency between the speaker and the learner. when an experimenter was live than when she The "video deficit" (Anderson & Pempek, 2005), appeared in the screen condition (Roseberry et al., or the discrepancy between learning from a live per- 2009). Even though children older than 3 years son and learning from an equivalent media source, gained some information from video alone, this is a widely known phenomenon. Kuhl et al. (2003), learning was still not as robust as learning from live for example, exposed 9-month-old infants from social interactions. English-speaking households to Mandarin Chinese Given the overwhelming evidence that young through speakers on video or by live speakers. The children do not learn as much from video as they do from live interactions, what accounts for this This research was supported by NICHD Grants 5101HD050199 discrepancy? One line of research, outside of the and NSF BCS-0642529 to the second and third authors. We thank Russell Ritchie for his assistance in data collection and Tilbe Goksun for valuable discussions on study design. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to 2013 The Authors Sarah Roseberry, Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, Uni- Child Development @ 2013 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. versity of Washington, Mail Stop 357988, Seattle, WA 98195 All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2014/8503-0010 Electronic mail may be sent to sarahr28@uw.edu. DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12166Social Contingency Helps Toddlers Learn Language 957 language literature, suggests that children do learn produced more syllabic, or speech-like, vocalizations. from video if the video format also allows them to These findings have been extended with 5- and engage in a contingent interaction (Lauricella, Pem- 3-month-olds who engaged in a contingent or pek, Barr, & Calvert, 2010; Troseth, Saylor, & noncontingent interaction with their mothers (Gold- Archer, 2006). Troseth et al. (2006), for example, stein, King, & West, 2003; Goldstein, Schwade, & used an object retrieval task, in which an experi- Bornstein, 2009). Infants learn quickly that their menter hid a toy, told the 24-month-olds where it vocalizations affect their caregiver's response (Gold- was located, and then asked the toddlers to find stein et al., 2009), and infants whose mothers were the toy. Before revealing the location of the hidden told to respond immediately to infant vocalizations, toy, all children viewed a 5-min warm-up of the as opposed to responding randomly, produced experimenter on video. Half of the toddlers partici- more mature vocalizations (Goldstein et al., 2003). pated in a two-way interaction with the adult via Taken together, contingency has been implicated closed-circuit video for the warm-up, whereas the as an important catalyst for early language develop- other children viewed a prerecorded video of the ment, and its absence may be responsible for chil- adult as they had interacted with another child. dren's inability to use information presented on During the interaction via closed-circuit video, the video. However, the role of social contingency in chil- adult on video called children by name and dren's ability to learn words has not been explored. engaged them in conversation about their pets and This study examines social contingency as a cue for siblings. The prerecorded, or yoked, video was not language learning. We define a socially contingent dependent on the child's responses and showed the partner as one whose responses are not only immedia experimenter asking about pets and siblings that ate and reliable but are also accurate in content (Born- were not relevant to the child for whom the video stein et al., 2008; Csibra, 2010; Troseth et al., 2006). was played. When children searched for the hidden One method of investigating social contingency in oy, only the children who experienced a social children's language learning is through video chats. interaction with the adult via video found the toy Video chatting is a new technology that provides a at rates greater than chance. The researchers argue middle ground between live social interactions and that socially contingent video training allowed tod- screen media. This communication tool has some dlers to overcome the video deficit. These findings features of video and some features of live inter- have recently been extended to show increased actions. As a video, it provides a two-dimensional learning from interactive computer games relative screen. As an interaction, it is a platform for socially to watching video (Lauricella et al., 2010). contingent exchanges. To a slightly lesser degree, Troseth et al. (2006) defined contingent interac- video chat offers the possibility of noting where the tions as a two-way exchange in which the adult on speaker is looking, although the speaker's eye gaze video established herself as relevant and interactive is somewhat distorted from the child's perspective. by referring to the child by name and by asking Children use a speaker's eye gaze as an important children-specific questions about their siblings and communicative signal from early in life (Csibra, pets. This view of social contingency posits that 2010). Infants prefer to look at eyes from birth socially contingent interactions should be appropri- (Batki, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Connelan, & ate in content (Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Hahn, & Ahluwalia, 2000), and even 3-month-olds prefer to Haynes, 2008) and intensity (Gergely & Watson, look at photographs of faces with eyes that appear 1996). It is a departure from a narrower definition to make eye contact with them (Farroni, Csibra, of contingency, which focuses solely on timing and Simion, & Johnson, 2002). By 19-20 months, toddlers reliability (Beebe et al., 2011; Catmur, 2011). understand that eye gaze can be referential and can In the few studies that have investigated the role help them uncover the meanings of novel words of contingency in language learning, timing and (Baldwin, 1993). Novel labels typically refer to the synchrony of interactions have been the focus. referent in the speaker's purview (Baldwin, 1993; Bloom, Russell, and Wassenberg (1987), for Bloom, 2002; Tomasello, 1995), and in fact, when the example, manipulated whether adults responded to referent of a novel word is ambiguous, children are 3-month-olds randomly or in a conversational, turn- more likely to check speaker gaze to determine the taking manner. Here, the contingent interaction correct referent (Baldwin, Bill, & Ontai, 1996). One appeared as the parent listening while the infant recent study suggests that older infants use eye gaze vocalized and then immediately vocalizing in to learn labels for boring objects even when they return. Results suggested that infants who experi- would prefer to look at other interesting objects enced turn-taking interactions with an adult (Pruden, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, & Hennon, 2006)

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4. DQ 5. Create your initial post on the DQ 5 Discussion Board in response to the following: There are many different opinions about how media, specifically TV and the Internet, impact children during toddlerhood either positively or negatively. Find at least one perspective on the topic (video, blog post, Facebook post) and share it. Do you agree or disagree with the opinion, and why? How does it match with what you now know from Roseberry et al. (2014)? 4. DQ 5. Create your initial post on the DQ 5 Discussion Board in response to the following: There are many different opinions about how media, specifically TV and the Internet, impact children during toddlerhood either positively or negatively. Find at least one perspective on the topic (video, blog post, Facebook post) and share it. Do you agree or disagree with the opinion, and why? How does it match with what you now know from Roseberry et al. (2014)?