The use of social and salience cues in early word learning

Houston-Price, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6368-142X, Plunkett, K. and Duffy, H. (2006) The use of social and salience cues in early word learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 95 (1). pp. 27-55. ISSN 0022-0965 doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2006.03.006

Abstract/Summary

This article explores young infants' ability to learn new words in situations providing tightly controlled social and salience cues to their reference. Four experiments investigated whether, given two potential referents, 15-month-olds would attach novel labels to (a) an image toward which a digital recording of a face turned and gazed, (b) a moving image versus a stationary image, (c) a moving image toward which the face gazed, and (d) a gazed-on image versus a moving image. Infants successfully used the recorded gaze cue to form new word-referent associations and also showed learning in the salience condition. However, their behavior in the salience condition and in the experiments that followed suggests that, rather than basing their judgments of the words' reference on the mere presence or absence of the referent's motion, infants were strongly biased to attend to the consistency with which potential referents moved when a word was heard. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/13989
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Development Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Language and Cognition University of Reading Malaysia
Uncontrolled Keywords	word learning, reference, salience, gaze direction, covariation, preferential looking, ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT, VISUAL-ATTENTION, INFANTS, GAZE, COMPREHENSION, 6-MONTH-OLDS, SENSITIVITY, OVERHEARING, DIRECTION, CHILDREN
Publisher	Elsevier
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