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Experimental conditions to facilitate infants discrimination learning

The investigation of the infant's simple and conditional discrimination learning demands an experimental planning that involves variables and appropriate situation features to population peculiarities. It was described the performances in discrimination tasks of four 12 until 24 month old infants in relation to: discrimination tasks, general conditions of the experimental procedure - to play between attempts; to play after sessions' conclusion; attempts' number or correct responses to reach learning criterion. The infants participated in one of two experiments, in a daycare center, where one apparatus to teach discrimination were located. Constant analysis of the participants' behavior allowed identifies relations between the infants' responses and the nature of the social contact with the experimenter and the variety of stimuli with functions predicable or not in experimental planning. The manipulation of selected variables produced: the expansion of the infants' time in the experimental situation; the increase of the infants' responses directed to the apparatus and the increase of infants' correct choices.

simple discrimination; conditional discrimination; identity matching; infants; experimental studies


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