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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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

Knowledge as process: contextually-cued attention and early word learning.

Linda B Smith¹, Eliana Colunga, Hanako Yoshida

¹Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. smith4@indiana.edu

Cognitive Science

|December 1, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Attention guides learning by integrating past experiences with current context. These attentional processes are crucial for cognitive development, particularly evident in children

Keywords:

cued attention development noun learning

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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Published on: July 13, 2019

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Learning is fundamentally dependent on attention.
Attentional processes dynamically integrate learned regularities and immediate contextual cues.
Existing research extensively covers cued attention and attentional learning in adults.

Purpose of the Study:

To review the literature on cued attention and attentional learning in adults.
To propose these processes as significant mechanisms of cognitive development.
To illustrate the value of this proposal using children's novel word learning.

Main Methods:

Literature review of cued attention and attentional learning.
Theoretical proposal linking attentional mechanisms to cognitive development.
Application of the proposal to empirical phenomena in child language acquisition.

Main Results:

Attentional cueing dynamically integrates learned regularities and immediate context.
Cued attention and attentional learning are proposed as key drivers of cognitive development.
These processes effectively explain phenomena in children's novel word learning.

Conclusions:

Attentional mechanisms are fundamental to learning and cognitive development.
The integration of learned regularities and contextual cues is vital for attention.
Further research should explore these attentional processes in developmental contexts, especially language acquisition.