This study examined whether 12-month-olds will accept words that differ phonologically and phonetically from their native language as object labels in an associative learning task. Sixty infants were presented with sets of English word-object (N = 30), Japanese word-object (N = 15), or Czech word-object (N = 15) pairings until they habituated.…

Child-directed speech segments produced by mothers of 2- to 6-month olds varying in self-reported depressive symptoms were assessed on a summation test with 4-month olds of nondepressed mothers. Significant positive summation was obtained in infants tested with speech produced by mothers with comparatively fewer self-reported depressive symptoms…

Two studies examined whether 1-year olds' name learning during joint attention was guided by expectation that names will be in the form of spoken words. Results showed that 13-month olds, but not 20-month olds, learned a new sound/object correspondence, as evidenced by their choosing targets reliably in responses to hearing the word or sound on…