Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 21, Issue 2, Pages 284-291Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797609358570
Keywords
language acquisition; word learning; statistical learning
Categories
Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01HD37466, F32 HD057698, R01 HD037466, P30 HD03352, R37 HD037466, P30 HD003352] Funding Source: Medline
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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.
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