Rapid Word Learning by Fifteen-Month-Olds under Tightly Controlled Conditions

• Published in: Child development Vol. 69; no. 2; pp. 309 - 320
• Main Authors: Schafer, Graham, Plunkett, Kim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.04.1998; University of Chicago Press; Blackwell; University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development, etc
• Subjects: Attention; Auditory Stimuli; Babies; Bards; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Children; Cognition and Language; Developmental psychology; Experimentation; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Infant; Infants; Language Acquisition; Language comprehension; Language Development; Learning; Learning rate; Legal objections; Looking; Male; Mental Recall; Newborn. Infant; Novel words; Paired-Associate Learning; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Preferences; Psychology, Child; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Research Methodology; Research methods; Stimulus; Toddlers; Verbal Learning; Visual fixation; Visual Perception; Visual Preference; Visual Preference Technique; Visual Stimulation; Visual Stimuli; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development; Word Learning; Words; Human; Verbal learning; Verbal comprehension; Word; Infant; Cognition; Experimental study; Visual stimulus; Acquisition process; Acoustic stimulus; Language; Cognitive development; Stimulus preference
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06190.x

Infants (12 to 17 months) were taught 2 novel words for 2 images of novel objects, by pairing isolated auditory labels with to-be-associated images. Comprehension was tested using a preferential looking task in which the infant was presented with both images together with an isolated auditory label. The auditory label usually, but not always, matched one of the images. Infants looked preferentially at images that matched the auditory stimulus. The experiment controlled within-subjects for both side bias and preference for previously named items. Infants showed learning after 12 presentations of the new words. Evidence is presented that, in certain circumstances, the duration of longest look at a target may be a more robust measure of target preference than overall looking time. The experiment provides support for previous demonstrations of rapid word learning by pre-vocabulary spurt children, and offers some methodological improvements to the preferential looking task.