A selective looking experiment is one in which researchers observe an infant to determine which of two scenes the infant prefers. This type of experiment would be best suited to determining __________.
A) whether or not 2-year-olds can imitate three-word sentences
B) the rate at which infants will suck a pacifier to hear various phonemes
C) whether or not an infant still uses overregularizations
D) whether or not infants understand that "Maria pats Grover" means something different from "Grover pats Maria"

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

A selective looking experiment is used to determine infants' comprehension and discrimination abilities. In this particular case, the experiment is designed to test whether the infant can understand the difference between "Maria pats Grover" and "Grover pats Maria," which falls under the category of comprehension. Therefore, choice D is the best answer. The other choices are focused on other aspects of language acquisition such as imitation, phoneme discrimination, and overregularization, which are not directly related to comprehension or discrimination abilities.

A Selective Looking Experiment Is One in Which Researchers Observe