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. 2006 Mar-Apr;77(2):266-80.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00869.x.

The birth of words: ten-month-olds learn words through perceptual salience

Shannon M Pruden  1 , Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Elizabeth A Hennon
Affiliations

The birth of words: ten-month-olds learn words through perceptual salience

Shannon M Pruden et al. Child Dev. 2006 Mar-Apr.

Abstract

A core task in language acquisition is mapping words onto objects, actions, and events. Two studies investigated how children learn to map novel labels onto novel objects. Study 1 investigated whether 10-month-olds use both perceptual and social cues to learn a word. Study 2, a control study, tested whether infants paired the label with a particular spatial location rather than to an object. Results show that 10-month-olds can learn new labels and do so by relying on the perceptual salience of an object instead of social cues provided by a speaker. This is in direct contrast to the way in which older children (12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds) learn and extend new object names.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Interactive intermodal preferential looking paradigm. The child sits on his or her parent’s lap in front of the flip board. The experimenter stands behind the flip board. A hidden camera behind the curtain records children’s looking preferences toward two objects on the display board.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Stimuli used across both studies. An “interesting object” was always paired with a “boring object.” Two object sets were used. The multicolored party clacker was always paired with the beige bottle opener (object set 1), where as the blue sparkle wand was always paired with the white cabinet latch (object set 2).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Infants’ looking times during the salience trial. The y-axis depicts a proportion of looking time to the interesting object. A number greater than .50 indicates a preference for the interesting object, where as a number below .50 indicates a preference for the boring object. *p<.05.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Infants’ looking times during the training trial. ***p<.001.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Infants’ looking times across the three test trials: original label, new label, and recovery. **p<.01. ***p<.001.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Coincidental condition only: infants’ looking times during the three test trials. **p<.01.+p = .08.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Conflict condition only: infants’ looking times during the three test trials. ***p<.001.+p = .08.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Infants’ looking times during the salience trial. *p<.05.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Infants’ looking times during the training trial. ***p<.001.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Infants’ looking times across the three test trials:original label, new label, and recovery. *p<.05.
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