Abstract：
One of the most important challenges for a developing infant is learning how best to allocate their attention and forage for information in the midst of a great deal of novel stimulation. We propose that infants of altricial species solve this challenge by learning selectively from events that are contingent on their immature behavior, such as babbling. Such a contingency filter would focus attention and learning on the behavior of social partners, because social behavior reliably fits infants\' sensitivity to contingency. In this way a contingent response by a caregiver to an immature behavior becomes a source of learnable information - feedback - to the infant. Social interactions with responsive caregivers afford infants opportunities to explore the impacts of their immature behavior on their environment, which facilitates the development of socially guided learning. Furthermore, contingent interactions are opportunities to make and test predictions about the efficacy of their social behaviors and those of others. In this chapter, we will use prelinguistic vocal learning to exemplify how infants use their developing vocal abilities to elicit learnable information about language from their social partners. Specifically, we review how caregivers\' contingent responses to babbling create information that facilitates infant vocal learning and drives the development of communication. Infants play an active role in this process, as their developing predictions about the consequences of their actions serve to further refine their allocation of attention and drive increases in the maturity of their vocal behavior.
摘要：
对于发育中的婴儿来说，最重要的挑战之一是学习如何在大量新颖的刺激中最好地分配他们的注意力和信息。我们建议，自生物种的婴儿通过有选择地从取决于其不成熟行为的事件中学习来解决这一挑战，比如胡言乱语。这种应急过滤器将把注意力和学习集中在社会伙伴的行为上，因为社会行为可靠地适合婴儿对偶然性的敏感性。通过这种方式，护理人员对不成熟行为的偶然反应成为对婴儿的可学习信息的来源-反馈。与反应灵敏的照顾者的社交互动为婴儿提供了探索其不成熟行为对环境的影响的机会。这促进了社会指导学习的发展。此外，偶然的互动是对他们的社会行为和其他人的社会行为的有效性做出和测试预测的机会。在这一章中,我们将使用前语言声乐学习来举例说明婴儿如何利用其发展中的声乐能力从其社交伙伴那里获得有关语言的可学习信息。具体来说,我们回顾了护理人员对胡言乱语的偶然反应如何创造信息，促进婴儿声乐学习并推动交流发展。婴儿在这个过程中发挥着积极的作用，因为他们对行为后果的发展预测有助于进一步完善他们的注意力分配，并推动他们发声行为的成熟度增加。
