'Word-learning wizardry' at I;6

Houston-Price, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6368-142X, Plunkett, K. and Harris, P. (2005) 'Word-learning wizardry' at I;6. Journal of Child Language, 32 (1). pp. 175-189. ISSN 0305-0009 doi: 10.1017/s0305000904006610

Abstract/Summary

This article explores whether infants are able to learn words as rapidly as has been reported for preschoolers. Sixty-four infants aged 1;6 were taught labels for either two moving images or two still images. Each image-label pair was presented three times, after which comprehension was assessed using an adaptation of the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Three repetitions of each label were found to be sufficient for learning to occur, fewer than has previously been reported for infants under two years. Moreover, contrary to a previous finding, learning was equally rapid for infants who were taught labels for moving versus still images. The findings indicate that infants in the early stages of acquiring a vocabulary learn new word-referent associations with ease, and that the learning conditions that allow such learning are less restricted that was previously believed.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/13988
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	EARLY LEXICAL COMPREHENSION, COMMUNICATIVE DEVELOPMENT, INFANTS, CHILDREN, ACQUISITION, LANGUAGE, ABILITY
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
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