The temporal dynamics of labelling shape infant object recognition

Caregivers often shake or loom an object towards an infant as they say its name. It is well-established that this synchrony helps infants form word-object associations. We hypothesized that word-object synchrony has an even more fundamental effect on infant development by influencing object perception. Here we tested whether word-object synchrony influences infants' visual representations of objects. Infants were familiarized to words presented in or out of synchrony with an object's motion, or with a static object. They were then tested in silence on their ability to discriminate the familiarized object from one that differed in shape, in color, or both shape and color. Although there were no global differences in performance across conditions, infants exposed to synchrony showed the clearest evidence of recognizing the familiarized object, and appeared to rely on shape in doing so. Thus, word-object synchrony may influence pre-lexical development by supporting the formation of object representations.