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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
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Concept-Based Word Learning in Human Infants.

Jun Yin1, Gergely Csibra2

  • 1Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University yinj@ceu.hu.

Psychological Science
|July 22, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Infants learn object labels by understanding abstract roles, not just appearance. This early word learning shows babies expect new words to describe actions and concepts.

Keywords:
chasing actionconceptsobject kindsopen dataopen materialsperceptual similarityword learning

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Theories of early word learning often focus on perceptual features versus object categories.
  • It is debated whether infants map labels to perceptual similarities or conceptual kinds.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether infants map novel labels to abstract behavioral roles or perceptual features.
  • To determine if infants prioritize conceptual understanding over perceptual similarity in early word acquisition.

Main Methods:

  • 14-month-old infants were taught labels for action roles (e.g., 'chaser') in interactive scenarios.
  • Experiments involved varying perceptual features of agents performing the role.
  • Infants' preferences for interpreting novel labels were assessed.

Main Results:

  • Infants rapidly learned labels for behavioral roles, even without shared perceptual features.
  • When given a choice, infants preferred to associate novel labels with the agent's role, not appearance.
  • Learning labels for abstract behavioral concepts was as easy as for perceptual object concepts.

Conclusions:

  • Infants can learn word meanings based on abstract behavioral characteristics from an early age.
  • Early word learning involves an expectation that novel words refer to concepts and roles, not just perceptual properties.
  • This suggests a conceptual basis for early word acquisition in infants.