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Updated: Jul 3, 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
Infants discriminate manners and paths in non-linguistic dynamic events
Rachel Pulverman1, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
1Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. rpulverm@umich.edu
Abstract:
Do 14- to 17-month-olds notice the paths and manners of motion events? English- and Spanish-learning infants were habituated to an animated motion event including a manner (e.g., spinning) and a path (e.g., over). They were then tested on four types of events that changed either the manner, the path, both, or neither component. Both English- and Spanish-learning infants attended to changes of manner and changes of path. Thus, infants from two different language communities proved sensitive to components of events that undergird relational term learning.
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