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Updated: May 29, 2026
05:35
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 avoid 'labouring in vain' by attending more to learnable than unlearnable linguistic patterns.
LouAnn Gerken1, Frances K Balcomb, Juliet L Minton
1Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0068, USA. gerken@u.arizona.edu
Developmental Science
|September 3, 2011
Summary
Human infants possess an implicit learning metric, directing attention towards learnable patterns. Seventeen-month-olds showed longer engagement with learnable linguistic grammars, indicating developmental learning progress.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Environments contain numerous patterns, but distinguishing learnable from spurious ones is crucial for efficient learning.
- Learners require an internal metric to gauge progress and focus on beneficial patterns without external feedback.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether human infants possess an implicit metric of their own learning progress.
- To determine if infants preferentially attend to learnable environmental patterns.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted with 17-month-old infants.
- Infants' attention was measured by habituation time and trials when exposed to learnable versus unlearnable linguistic grammars.
Main Results:
- Infants demonstrated longer attention spans and habituation times for learnable grammars.
- This indicates a greater investment of time and trials when a valid generalization could be made from the input stimuli.
Conclusions:
- Findings provide the first evidence for an implicit learning metric in infants.
- Infants actively direct their attention towards learnable aspects of their environment, optimizing their learning efficiency.
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