TY - JOUR

T1 - Infants’ attention during cross-situational word learning

T2 - Environmental variability promotes novelty preference

AU - Dunn, K.J.

AU - Frost, R.L.A.

AU - Monaghan, P.

PY - 2024/2/6

Y1 - 2024/2/6

N2 - Infants as young as 14 months can track cross-situational statistics between sets of words and objects to acquire word–referent mappings. However, in naturalistic word learning situations, words and objects occur with a host of additional information, sometimes noisy, present in the environment. In this study, we tested the effect of this environmental variability on infants’ word learning. Fourteen-month-old infants (N = 32) were given a cross-situational word learning task with additional gestural, prosodic, and distributional cues that occurred reliably or variably. In the reliable cue condition, infants were able to process this additional environmental information to learn the words, attending to the target object during test trials. But when the presence of these cues was variable, infants paid greater attention to the gestural cue during training and subsequently switched preference to attend more to novel word–object mappings rather than familiar ones at test. Environmental variation may be key to enhancing infants’ exploration of new information.

AB - Infants as young as 14 months can track cross-situational statistics between sets of words and objects to acquire word–referent mappings. However, in naturalistic word learning situations, words and objects occur with a host of additional information, sometimes noisy, present in the environment. In this study, we tested the effect of this environmental variability on infants’ word learning. Fourteen-month-old infants (N = 32) were given a cross-situational word learning task with additional gestural, prosodic, and distributional cues that occurred reliably or variably. In the reliable cue condition, infants were able to process this additional environmental information to learn the words, attending to the target object during test trials. But when the presence of these cues was variable, infants paid greater attention to the gestural cue during training and subsequently switched preference to attend more to novel word–object mappings rather than familiar ones at test. Environmental variation may be key to enhancing infants’ exploration of new information.

U2 - 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105859

DO - 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105859

M3 - Journal article

VL - 241

JO - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

SN - 0022-0965

M1 - 105859

ER -