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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 22, 2025

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

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Can 18-Month-Old Infants Learn Words by Listening In on Conversations?

Penelope Floor1, Nameera Akhtar1

  • 1Department of Psychology University of California, Santa Cruz.

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
|January 8, 2021
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Eighteen-month-old infants can learn new words by overhearing conversations, even without direct instruction. This study explored word acquisition through passive listening in young children.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Language Acquisition

Background:

  • Prior studies indicate children aged two can acquire vocabulary from third-party interactions.
  • Infant word learning is a critical area in developmental psychology.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if younger infants, specifically 18-month-olds, can learn novel object labels by overhearing conversations.
  • To examine the role of direct versus indirect exposure in early word learning.

Main Methods:

  • 18-month-old infants were exposed to new word-object pairings.
  • Exposure occurred in two conditions: direct instruction by an experimenter and overhearing the experimenter use the word with another adult.
  • Memory load was considered a potential factor.

Main Results:

  • Infants demonstrated the ability to learn novel words through overhearing.
  • This learning was observed when memory demands were not excessively high.
  • Overhearing proved to be a viable, albeit conditional, pathway for word acquisition.

Conclusions:

  • Eighteen-month-old infants possess the capacity for word learning via overhearing.
  • Social context and memory load influence the effectiveness of word acquisition through indirect exposure.
  • Findings suggest that incidental learning from ambient language is significant in early development.