Decisions, decisions: infant language learning when multiple generalizations are possible
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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

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
1Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. gerken@u.arizona.edu
Abstract:
Two experiments presented infants with artificial language input in which at least two generalizations were logically possible. The results demonstrate that infants made one of the two generalizations tested, the one that was most statistically consistent with the particular subset of the data they received. The experiments shed light on how learners might go about solving the induction problem for human language.
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