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Infants show early comprehension of basic color words
Samuel H Forbes1, Kim Plunkett1
1Department of Experimental Psychology.
Developmental Psychology
|November 30, 2018
Summary
Infants as young as 19 months can reliably understand basic color words. This research suggests color word acquisition may be easier than previously believed, challenging earlier findings on infant language development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Infant Language Acquisition
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Infant color word learning is considered challenging.
- Infants often misuse or overextend color vocabulary even after learning words.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate infant comprehension of basic color words.
- To determine the age of reliable color word understanding in infants.
- To explore how linguistic context influences color word comprehension.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an intermodal preferential looking task.
- Tested 146 infants across 5 age groups.
- Assessed comprehension of six basic color words (red, green, yellow, blue, black, white).
Main Results:
- Reliable comprehension of color words demonstrated by 19-month-olds.
- No significant order of acquisition effects observed for the tested color words.
- Infant performance improved with redundant noun information and adjectival placement of color labels.
Conclusions:
- Color words may be learned more easily than previously assumed.
- 19-month-olds expect color labels to function as adjectives.
- Findings support recent parental reports on early color word acquisition.
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