14-Month-old infants form novel word-spatial relation associations

This study explored 14-month-old infants' ability to form novel word-spatial relation associations. During habituation, infants heard 1 novel word (e.g., teek) while viewing dynamic containment events (i.e., Big Bird placed in a box) and, on other habituation trials, a second novel word (e.g., blick) while viewing dynamic support events (i.e., Big Bird placed on the box). Each novel word was presented in a sentence (e.g., "She's putting Big Bird teek the box"). During the test, infants discriminated an event that maintained the habituation word-relation pairing from one that presented a switch in this pairing. The results indicate that 14-month-olds can learn to form word-relation associations quickly, requiring only a few minutes of experience with each word-relation pairing. Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Duke Scholars

Author Makeba Parramore Wilbourn Psychology & Neuroscience