INFANTS RELIANCE ON A SOCIAL CRITERION FOR ESTABLISHING WORD-OBJECT RELATIONS

The language children hear presents them with a multitude of co-occurr ences between words and things in the world, and they must repeatedly determine which among these manifold co-occurrences is relevant. Socia l factors-such as cues regarding the speaker's referential intent-migh t serve as one guide to whether word-object covariation should be regi stered. In 2 studies, infants (15-20 months and 18-20 months in Studie s 1 and 2, respectively) heard novel labels at a time when they were i nvestigating a single novel object; in one case the label was uttered by a speaker seated within the infant's view and displaying concurrent attention to the novel toy (coupled condition), whereas in the other case the label emanated from a speaker seated out of the infant's view (decoupled condition). In both studies, subsequent comprehension ques tions indicated that infants of 18-20 months registered a stable link between label and object in the coupled condition, but not in the deco upled condition, despite the fact that covariation between label and o bject was equivalent in the 2 conditions. Thus, by 18-20 months childr en are inclined to establish a mapping between word and object only wh en a speaker displays signs of referring to that object.