Rapid gains in speed of verbal processing by infants in the 2nd year

Infants improve substantially in language ability during their 2nd year Res eal ch on the early development of speech production shows that vocabulary begins to expand rapidly around the age of IS months. During this period in fants also make impressive gains in understanding spoken language. We exami ned the time course of word recognition in infants ages 15 to 24 months, tr acking their eye movements as they looked at pictures in response to famili ar spoken words. The speed and efficiency of verbal processing increased dr amatically over the 2nd year: Although 15-month-old infants did not orient to the con-ect picture until after the target word was spoken, 24-month-old s were significantly faster; shifting their gaze to the con-ect picture bef ore the end of the spoken word. By 2 years of age. children are progressing toward the highly efficient performance of adults, making decisions about words based an incomplete acoustic information.