ERIC Number: EJ991705
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-3920
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
12-Month-Olds' Phonotactic Knowledge Guides Their Word-Object Mappings
MacKenzie, Heather; Curtin, Suzanne; Graham, Susan A.
Child Development, v83 n4 p1129-1136 Jul-Aug 2012
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. Infants associated CVCV English, CCVC English, and CVCV Japanese words, but not CCVC Czech words, with novel objects. These results demonstrate that by 12 months of age, infants are beginning to apply their language-specific knowledge to their acceptance of word forms. That is, they will not map words that violate the phonotactics of their native language to objects. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)
Descriptors: Novelty (Stimulus Dimension), Associative Learning, Slavic Languages, Infants, Vocabulary Development, Native Language, English, Comparative Analysis, Japanese, Experiments, Child Language, Visual Stimuli, Vowels, Phonemes, Pretests Posttests, Likert Scales
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
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Language: English
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