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Related Experiment Videos

Do words facilitate object categorization in 9-month-old infants?

M T Balaban1, S R Waxman

  • 1Department of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|January 1, 1997
PubMed
Summary

Nine-month-old infants learn object categories faster when hearing novel words compared to tones. Even filtered words aid infant language development and attention to novelty, impacting early object categorization.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Novel words aid object categorization in preschoolers and 12-month-old infants.
  • Early language exposure significantly influences cognitive development.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if 9-month-old infants benefit from novel words in object categorization.
  • To examine the effect of infant-directed speech and content-filtered words on infant attention and categorization.

Main Methods:

  • Infants were familiarized with animal images and either infant-directed words or tones.
  • Visual fixation was measured during familiarization and test trials comparing novel and familiar exemplars.
  • A third group was exposed to content-filtered words to assess intelligibility effects.

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Main Results:

  • Infants hearing words showed enhanced attention to novelty compared to those hearing tones.
  • Content-filtered words also facilitated attention to novelty, similar to clear words.
  • Auditory stimuli, particularly words, enhanced visual fixation during familiarization.

Conclusions:

  • Novel words facilitate object categorization in infants as young as 9 months.
  • Infants' emerging appreciation of language impacts early cognitive processes like categorization.
  • Content-filtered words suggest that acoustic properties beyond full intelligibility can support early word learning.