The transition from affective to linguistic meaning

Area of Science:

• Developmental psychology
• Infant language acquisition
• Social cognition

Background:

• Infants' understanding of social cues evolves.
• Early language development involves interpreting both words and non-verbal signals.
• Social referencing is a key mechanism for infants to learn about their environment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the shift from affective to linguistic meaning in 15-month-old infants.
• To examine how receptive vocabulary influences infants' responses to language versus paralanguage.
• To understand the interplay between lexical content and affective cues in infant behavior regulation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a social referencing procedure to assess infant behavior regulation.
• Created stimulus messages by crossing lexical content (approving/disapproving) with paralanguage (facial/vocal cues).
• Measured the impact of language and paralanguage on infant behavior, considering receptive vocabulary.

Main Results:

• At a group level, 15-month-olds' behavior was more influenced by paralanguage than lexical content.
• Infants with larger receptive vocabularies showed greater regulation by lexical content compared to paralanguage.
• Receptive vocabulary significantly predicted the relative importance of language versus paralanguage.

Conclusions:

• Suggests a developmental transition in infants' comprehension, moving from affective to linguistic meaning.
• This shift in comprehension parallels changes in infant expression, integrating affect and language.
• Individual differences in vocabulary size mark the transition in how infants process social cues.