2010/01/08 by Jill Lany, Jenny R. Saffran · 1 citation
Psychology · #Language Development and Disorders #Child and Animal Learning Development #Reading and Literacy Development
paper · doi:10.1177/0956797609358570
openalex publication_date 2010/01/08 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Infants are highly sensitive to statistical patterns in their auditory language input that mark word categories (e.g., noun and verb). However, it is unknown whether experience with these cues facilitates the acquisition of semantic properties of word categories. In a study testing this hypothesis, infants first listened to an artificial language in which word categories were reliably distinguished by statistical cues (experimental group) or in which these properties did not cue category membership (control group). Both groups were then trained on identical pairings between the words and pictures from two categories (animals and vehicles). Only infants in the experimental group learned the trained associations between specific words and pictures. Moreover, these infants generalized the pattern to include novel pairings. These results suggest that experience with statistical cues marking lexical categories sets the stage for learning the meanings of individual words and for generalizing meanings to new category members.