The present study explores the viability of using tablets in assessing early word comprehension by means of a two-alternative forced-choice task. Forty-nine 18–20-month-old Norwegian toddlers performed a touch-based word recognition task, in which they were prompted to identify the labeled target out of two displayed items on a touchscreen tablet. In each trial, the distractor item was either semantically related (e.g., dog–cat) or unrelated (e.g., dog–airplane) to the target. Our results show that toddlers as young as 18 months can engage meaningfully with a tablet-based assessment, with minimal verbal instruction and child–administrator interaction. Toddlers performed better in the semantically unrelated condition than in the related condition, suggesting that their word representations are still semantically coarse at this age. Furthermore, parental reports of comprehension, using the Norwegian version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories, predicted toddlers’ performance, with parent–child agreement stronger in the semantically unrelated condition, indicating that parents declare a word to be known by their child if it is understood at a coarse representational level. This study provides among the earliest evidence that remote data collection in 18-20 month-old toddlers is viable, as comparable results were observed from both in-laboratory and online administration of the touchscreen recognition task.

中文翻译：

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单词理解的平板电脑评估揭示了 18 至 20 个月大的幼儿的粗略单词表示

本研究通过两种可选的强制选择任务探讨了使用平板电脑评估早期单词理解的可行性。49 名 18-20 个月大的挪威幼儿执行了一项基于触摸的单词识别任务，他们被提示从触摸屏平板电脑上显示的两个项目中识别标记的目标。在每次试验中，干扰项与目标语义相关（例如，狗-猫）或无关（例如，狗-飞机）。我们的结果表明，年仅 18 个月的幼儿可以有意义地参与基于平板电脑的评估，只需最少的口头指导和儿童与管理员的互动。幼儿在语义无关的条件下比在相关条件下表现更好，这表明他们的单词表示在这个年龄段在语义上仍然很粗糙。此外，父母的理解报告，使用挪威版的麦克阿瑟-贝茨交流发展量表，预测了幼儿的表现，在语义无关的条件下，父母与孩子的一致性更强，表明如果某个词是，父母会宣布他们的孩子知道这个词在粗略的表征水平上理解。这项研究提供了最早的证据，表明在 18-20 个月大的幼儿中进行远程数据收集是可行的，因为从触摸屏识别任务的实验室内和在线管理中都观察到了类似的结果。表明如果在粗略的表示级别上理解一个单词，父母会宣布他们的孩子知道该单词。这项研究提供了最早的证据，表明在 18-20 个月大的幼儿中进行远程数据收集是可行的，因为从触摸屏识别任务的实验室内和在线管理中都观察到了类似的结果。表明如果在粗略的表示级别上理解一个单词，父母会宣布他们的孩子知道该单词。这项研究提供了最早的证据，表明在 18-20 个月大的幼儿中进行远程数据收集是可行的，因为从触摸屏识别任务的实验室内和在线管理中都观察到了类似的结果。