Two experiments showed two-year-olds pairs of videotaped actions, one familiar and one novel, and asked them to select referents of novel verbs. For actions not involving objects, children tended to select the novel action over the familiar one in each of four experiments. For actions involving objects, novel actions were chosen more often than…

Describes a study of three infants whose parents presented vocal models for the infants to imitate. Parents presented vocal models both with and without social praise. Infants showed systematic increases in matching after praise was introduced. Nonmatching vocalizations did not increase with introduction of praise. Findings demonstrate generalized…