Infants' learning about words and sounds in relation to objects

In acquiring language, babies learn not only that people can communicate ab out objects and events, but also that they typically use a particular kind of act as the communicative signal. The current studies asked whether 1-yea r-olds' learning of names during joint attention is guided by the expectati on that names will be in the form of spoken words. In the first study, 13-m onth-olds were introduced to either a novel word or a novel sound-producing action (using a small noisemaker). Both the word and the sound were produc ed by a re searcher as she showed the baby a new toy during a joint attenti on episode. The baby's memory for the link between the word or sound and th e object was tested in a multiple choice procedure. Thirteen-month-olds lea rned both the word-object and sound-object correspondences, as evidenced by their choosing the target reliably in response to hearing the word or soun d on test trials, but not on control trials when no word or sound was prese nt. In the second study, 13-month-olds, but not 20-month-olds, learned a ne w sound-object correspondence. These results indicate that infants initiall y accept a broad range of signals in communicative contexts and narrow the range with development.