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Related Experiment Video

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A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Lexical-semantic priming effects during infancy.

Natalia Arias-Trejo¹, Kim Plunkett

¹Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences

|November 26, 2009

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Infants develop semantic word associations by 21 months, showing interference from unrelated words. Repetition priming effects emerge earlier, around 18 months of age.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Linguistics

Background:

Understanding the emergence of semantic networks in early childhood is crucial for cognitive development research.
Infants' ability to link words semantically impacts their language acquisition and comprehension.
Previous research has explored early word recognition but less is known about semantic associations.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate when and how infants develop semantic systems of related words.
To examine word-word associations in early lexical development.
To identify the age at which semantic-associative links between words emerge in infants.

Main Methods:

Utilized an adapted inter-modal preferential looking task with word pairs (prime-target) and picture pairs (target-distracter).
Presented semantically related or unrelated prime-target word pairs to infants.
Tested 18-month-old and 21-month-old infants on word identification and priming effects.

Main Results:

A lexical-semantic priming effect was observed in 21-month-olds, with unrelated primes interfering with target identification.
No significant semantic priming effect was found in 18-month-olds.
Repetition priming effects were evident in 18-month-olds, indicating earlier sensitivity to word repetition.

Conclusions:

Infants begin to develop semantic-associative links between lexical items by 21 months of age.
Early lexical development involves both semantic associations and sensitivity to word repetition.
The findings provide insights into the timeline of semantic network formation in early childhood.