Alvin Tan

All Publications

• Infants' Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study. Developmental science Lucca, K., Yuen, F., Wang, Y., Alessandroni, N., Allison, O., Alvarez, M., Axelsson, E. L., Baumer, J., Baumgartner, H. A., Bertels, J., Bhavsar, M., Byers-Heinlein, K., Capelier-Mourguy, A., Chijiiwa, H., Chin, C. S., Christner, N., Cirelli, L. K., Corbit, J., Daum, M. M., Doan, T., Dresel, M., Exner, A., Fei, W., Forbes, S. H., Franchin, L., Frank, M. C., Geraci, A., Giraud, M., Gornik, M. E., Wiesmann, C. G., Grossmann, T., Hadley, I. M., Havron, N., Henderson, A. M., Matzner, E. H., Immel, B. A., Jankiewicz, G., Jędryczka, W., Kanakogi, Y., Kominsky, J. F., Lew-Williams, C., Liberman, Z., Liu, L., Liu, Y., Loeffler, M. T., Martin, A., Mayor, J., Meng, X., Misiak, M., Moreau, D., Nencheva, M. L., Oña, L. S., Otálora, Y., Paulus, M., Pepe, B., Pickron, C. B., Powell, L. J., Proft, M., Quinn, A. A., Rakoczy, H., Reschke, P. J., Roth-Hanania, R., Rothmaler, K., Schlegelmilch, K., Schlingloff-Nemecz, L., Schmuckler, M. A., Schuwerk, T., Seehagen, S., Şen, H. H., Shainy, M. R., Silvestri, V., Soderstrom, M., Sommerville, J., Song, H. J., Sorokowski, P., Stutz, S. E., Su, Y., Taborda-Osorio, H., Tan, A. W., Tatone, D., Taylor-Partridge, T., Tsang, C. K., Urbanek, A., Uzefovsky, F., Visser, I., Wertz, A. E., Williams, M., Wolsey, K., Wong, T. T., Woodward, A. M., Wu, Y., Zeng, Z., Zimmer, L., Hamlin, J. K. 2025; 28 (1): e13581

  Abstract

  Evaluating whether someone's behavior is praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental human trait. A seminal study by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life: infants preferred a character who helped, over hindered, another who tried but failed to climb a hill. This sparked a new line of inquiry into the origins of social evaluations; however, replication attempts have yielded mixed results. We present a preregistered, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating infants' preference for Helpers over Hinderers. We intended to (1) provide a precise estimate of the effect size of infants' preference for Helpers over Hinderers, and (2) determine the degree to which preferences are based on social information. Using the ManyBabies framework for big team-based science, we tested 1018 infants (567 included, 5.5-10.5 months) from 37 labs across five continents. Overall, 49.34% of infants preferred Helpers over Hinderers in the social condition, and 55.85% preferred characters who pushed up, versus down, an inanimate object in the nonsocial condition; neither proportion differed from chance or from each other. This study provides evidence against infants' prosocial preferences in the hill paradigm, suggesting the effect size is weaker, absent, and/or develops later than previously estimated. As the first of its kind, this study serves as a proof-of-concept for using active behavioral measures (e.g., manual choice) in large-scale, multi-lab projects studying infants.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/desc.13581

  View details for PubMedID 39600132

• The role of translation equivalents in bilingual word learning. Developmental science Tan, A. W., Marchman, V. A., Frank, M. C. 2024: e13476

  Abstract

  Bilingual environments present an important context for word learning. One feature of bilingual environments is the existence of translation equivalents (TEs)-words in different languages that share similar meanings. Documenting TE learning over development may give us insight into the mechanisms underlying word learning in young bilingual children. Prior studies of TE learning have often been confounded by the fact that increases in overall vocabulary size with age lead to greater opportunities for learning TEs. To address this confound, we employed an item-level analysis, which controls for the age trajectory of each item independently. We used Communicative Development Inventory data from four bilingual datasets (two English-Spanish and two English-French; total N = 419) for modeling. Results indicated that knowing a word's TE increased the likelihood of knowing that word for younger children and for TEs that are more similar phonologically. These effects were consistent across datasets, but varied across lexical categories. Thus, TEs may allow bilingual children to bootstrap their early word learning in one language using their knowledge of the other language. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Bilingual children must learn words that share a common meaning across both languages, that is, translation equivalents, like dog in English and perro in Spanish. Item-level models explored how translation equivalents affect word learning, in addition to child-level (e.g., exposure) and item-level (e.g., phonological similarity) factors. Knowing a word increased the probability of knowing its corresponding translation equivalent, particularly for younger children and for more phonologically-similar translation equivalents. These findings suggest that young bilingual children use their word knowledge in one language to bootstrap their learning of words in the other language.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/desc.13476

  View details for PubMedID 38226762

• Plurality Is a Good Start, but It's Time for Unification: A Commentary on "Computational Modeling of Bilingual Language Learning: Current Models and Future Directions" LANGUAGE LEARNING Kachergis, G., Tan, A., Frank, M. C. 2022

  View details for DOI 10.1111/lang.12531

  View details for Web of Science ID 000888466200001