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Updated: Jul 20, 2026
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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
Infants' learning about words and sounds in relation to objects
1Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, IL 60637, USA. ALW1@ccp.uchicago.edu
Child Development
|April 7, 1999
Summary
One-year-olds initially learn object names from various signals, not just spoken words. As they develop, infants increasingly expect words for communication.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Infants learn language through social interaction and joint attention.
- Understanding communicative signals is crucial for early language acquisition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if 1-year-olds expect names to be spoken words during joint attention.
- To determine how infants' understanding of communicative signals evolves with age.
Main Methods:
- 13-month-olds were exposed to novel object-word or object-sound pairings during joint attention.
- A multiple-choice procedure tested infants' memory for object-signal associations.
- A second study compared learning in 13-month-olds versus 20-month-olds.
Main Results:
- Thirteen-month-olds successfully learned both object-word and object-sound correspondences.
- Older infants (20-month-olds) did not learn new sound-object associations as readily as younger infants.
- Infants initially accept a wider range of signals before specializing in spoken words.
Conclusions:
- Early language acquisition involves learning from diverse communicative signals, not exclusively spoken words.
- Infants' expectations about communicative signals shift and narrow with age and development.
- This research sheds light on the flexibility and developmental trajectory of early word learning.
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