Prelinguistic foundations of verb learning: Infants discriminate and categorize dynamic human actions

Abstract

Action categorization is necessary for human cognition and is foundational to learning verbs, which label categories of actions and events. In two studies using a nonlinguistic preferential looking paradigm, 10- to 12-month-old English-learning infants were tested on their ability to discriminate and categorize a dynamic human manner of motion (i.e., way in which a figure moves; e.g., marching). Study 1 results reveal that infants can discriminate a change in path and actor across instances of the same manner of motion. Study 2 results suggest that infants categorize the manner of motion for dynamic human events even under conditions in which other components of the event change, including the actor's path and the actor. Together, these two studies extend prior research on infant action categorization of animated motion events by providing evidence that infants can categorize dynamic human actions, a skill foundational to the learning of motion verbs.

Keywords: Categorization; Discrimination; Event perception; Human actions; Preferential looking paradigm; Verb learning.

Figure 1

Study 1: Infants’ proportion of looking time to the novel action (PLN) in the path and actor discrimination trials at test. Error bars represent standard errors. **p < .005

Figure 2

Study 1: Infants’ proportion of looking time to the novel action (PLN) in first and second halves of the actor discrimination trial at test. Error bars represent standard errors. *p < .05

Figure 3

Study 2: Infants’ attention (FF) in the familiarization phase. Error bars represent standard errors.

Figure 4

Study 2: Infants’ proportion of looking time to the out-of-category action (PLO) in the salience and test phases. Error bars represent standard errors. *p < .05