Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future, or hypothetical events, posing the challenge of how children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available. One possibility is that iconic cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents support learning when referents are displaced. In an…

Object names are a major component of early vocabularies and learning object names depends on being able to visually recognize objects in the world. However, the fundamental visual challenge of the moment-to-moment variations in object appearances that learners must resolve has received little attention in word learning research. Here we provide…

Infants' pointing gestures are a critical predictor of early vocabulary size. However, it remains unknown precisely how pointing relates to word learning. The current study addressed this question in a sample of 108 infants, testing one mechanism by which infants' pointing may influence their learning. In Study 1, 18-month-olds, but not…

The article observes studies of word categorization in 3- to 4-months-old infants questioning their main conclusion that young infants may categorize words themselves. The review shows that there is no bilateral communication between them and adults as well as any perceptual interaction that can help infants acquire language. And yet language…

When hearing a novel name, children tend to select a novel object rather than a familiar one, a bias known as disambiguation. Using online processing measures with 18-, 24-, and 30-month-olds, we investigate how the development of this bias relates to word learning. Children's proportion of looking time to a novel object after hearing a novel name…

Expectancy-based localized attention has been shown to promote the formation and retrieval of multisensory memories in adults. Three experiments show that these processes also characterize attention and learning in 16- to 18-month old infants and, moreover, that these processes may play a critical role in supporting early object name learning. The…

The following manuscript is a review of research surrounding best practices for language and literacy development in children birth to age three. Part 1 of the review begins with the research on language acquisition beginning in utero, continuing through infancy and onto the emergence of speech. The review discusses the importance of language…

Eighteen-month-old children performed sorting tasks and their parents completed checklists of words used by the children. Children who performed exhaustive grouping, or grouping of objects of different kinds in different locations, were reported as using more words than children who did not perform exhaustive grouping. (BC)

A longitudinal study of three children examined the relation between object permanence and language development. (Author/NCR)