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Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Bergelson, E; Swingley, D
Published in: Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development
January 2015

A handful of recent experimental reports have shown that infants of 6 to 9 months know the meanings of some common words. Here, we replicate and extend these findings. With a new set of items, we show that when young infants (age 6-16 months, n=49) are presented with side-by-side video clips depicting various common early words, and one clip is named in a sentence, they look at the named video at above-chance rates. We demonstrate anew that infants understand common words by 6-9 months, and that performance increases substantially around 14 months. The results imply that 6-9 month olds' failure to understand words not referring to objects (verbs, adjectives, performatives) in a similar prior study is not attributable to the use of dynamic video depictions. Thus, 6-9 month olds' experience of spoken language includes some understanding of common words for concrete objects, but relatively impoverished comprehension of other words.

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Published In

Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development

DOI

EISSN

1547-3341

ISSN

1547-5441

Publication Date

January 2015

Volume

11

Issue

4

Start / End Page

369 / 380

Related Subject Headings

  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
  • 4704 Linguistics
  • 2004 Linguistics
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
 

Citation

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Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2015). Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension. Language Learning and Development : The Official Journal of the Society for Language Development, 11(4), 369–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2014.979387
Bergelson, Elika, and Daniel Swingley. “Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension.Language Learning and Development : The Official Journal of the Society for Language Development 11, no. 4 (January 2015): 369–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2014.979387.
Bergelson E, Swingley D. Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension. Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development. 2015 Jan;11(4):369–80.
Bergelson, Elika, and Daniel Swingley. “Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension.Language Learning and Development : The Official Journal of the Society for Language Development, vol. 11, no. 4, Jan. 2015, pp. 369–80. Epmc, doi:10.1080/15475441.2014.979387.
Bergelson E, Swingley D. Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension. Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development. 2015 Jan;11(4):369–380.

Published In

Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development

DOI

EISSN

1547-3341

ISSN

1547-5441

Publication Date

January 2015

Volume

11

Issue

4

Start / End Page

369 / 380

Related Subject Headings

  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
  • 4704 Linguistics
  • 2004 Linguistics
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing