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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

Information from multiple modalities helps 5-month-olds learn abstract rules.

Michael C Frank¹, Jonathan A Slemmer, Gary F Marcus

¹Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. mcfrank@mit.edu

Developmental Science

|July 29, 2009

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Younger infants (5-month-olds) learned abstract rules when presented with coordinated speech and visual stimuli. Multimodal information, not speech or visuals alone, was key for early rule learning.

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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

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Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Published on: June 30, 2020

Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Infant Learning
Multimodal Perception

Background:

By 7 months, infants learn abstract rules from stimuli, especially speech.
Younger infants' ability to learn abstract rules is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if multimodal stimulus information aids younger infants in identifying abstract rules.
To compare rule learning in 5-month-olds using different sensory combinations.

Main Methods:

Habituation paradigm with 5-month-old infants.
Stimuli included abstract patterns (ABA, ABB) in coordinated speech and visual shapes.
Experimental conditions: multimodal, visual-only, and auditory-only with uninformative visuals.

Main Results:

Infants showed evidence of abstract rule learning only when presented with informative multimodal cues.
Rule learning was not observed with visual shapes alone or speech sounds with uninformative visuals.

Conclusions:

Informative multimodal stimulus information facilitates abstract rule learning in younger infants.
Findings support the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis and Bayesian models of learning.