Reinforcement

•Look at matched picture after sound ends & it moves

•10 trials (5 of each pairing)

•2 or 4 blocks (2 pairs of words, 2 pairs of swoops)

Participants

•31 infants did 4 blocks

•35 infants did 2 blocks (2 pairs of swoops)

•24 infants were controls and heard only one word and only one swoop across 2 blocks

• no possible matching picture

Children

•Recruited at birth in local hospital

•Aged 20-22 months (mean 21.16, s.d. .25)

•45 boys and 45 girls

Results•Proportion of looking time to correct

picture:

• Words

• acking vs papping significantly greater than 0.5 (t24 = 3.09, p = .005)

• tutty vs chetty not greater (t29 = 1.65, p = .11)

• Swoops

• Combined swoops trials significantly greater than 0.5 (t57 = 2.41, p = .019)

•Reaction time to correct and incorrect picture

• Words

• Significant difference overall (t58 = 11.90, p < .001)

• Swoops

• Significant difference overall (t31 = 5.51, p < .001)

•But looking faster to “incorrect” i.e. static picture

Names that are not words: older infants still associate non-linguistic sounds with pictures.

Katie Alcock, Kirsty Krawczyk

Lancaster University

IntroductionVocabulary burst:

•Late in 2nd year of life

•Word-object associations

•Word-situation associations

•Does a label need to be a spoken word?

•Not in sign language

•Not early in development

Sound-object associations

•Woodward & Hoyne, 1999

•Presented novel word and novel toy or novel sound and novel toy

•Asked children to choose:

•Can you get me the toma?

•Can you get me one of these (squeak)?

•13 months - associate either with a toy

•20 months - only associate word with toy

•Interpretation

•Initially children will associate various input with objects

•Narrow this down to be only spoken words

•Graham & Kilbreath (2007) and Namy & Waxman (2002) - similar findings with gesture

•initial acceptance of both word and gesture

•by 22 or 26 months word is preferred

Current study•Investigating individual differences in

•word learning

•auditory processing

•graded learning task

• not all or nothing

Setup

•Two pictures (out of a set of 8)

•3 sec silence then sound

•Word:

•Look! Look at the chetty/tutty!

• Or swoop x 3

•short pure-tone transitions of different sizes (Aslin 1989)

•followed by longer static-frequency pure tones

•Comparison tone with 350Hz transition, test tones with 75Hz or 150Hz (closer = harder)

•Association with other variables

•Significant correlations between proportion of correct looking on swoop blocks and:

• Receptive language on Preschool Language Scale (r2

21= .559, p = .008)

• Repetition of nonwords (Roy & Chiat, 2004 - r2

16 = .517, p = .04)

• Symbolic play (Saudino et al 1998 - r237

= .35, p = .034)

• No correlation between swoop blocks and productive language or nonverbal cognitive ability

• No significant correlations with correct looking on words blocks

•Learning that one picture will move and looking at that?

• Looking time and reaction time for control group

• No difference between picture that could move and other picture

Discussion•Associate word or swoop with picture

•Prefer to look at moving picture

•But think sound refers to static picture? (Houston-Price & Nakai, 2004)

•Not just learning that one picture will move

•Applies with swoops as well

•Children heard to attempt imitation of swoops!

•Association with other abilities

•More with receptive language than productive language

•But not specifically language abilities?

Conclusion

•Can measure individual differences in strength/rate of association of a word with a situation

•Children can continue to associate a non-speech sound with a situation

•well into 2nd year of life

•Is this really “word” learning?

• Some word pairs seem to be learned well

•Others do not, and no significant correlation with language ability

•But nonverbal associations with expected variables

•including symbolic abilities

ReferencesAslin, R. N. (1989). Discrimination of frequency transitions by human

infants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 86(2), 582-590.

Graham, S. A., & Kilbreath, C. S. (2007). It's a sign of the kind: Gestures and words guide infants' inductive inferences. Developmental Psychology, 43(5), 1111-1123.

Houston-Price, C., & Nakai, S. (2004). Distinguishing novelty and familiarity effects in infant preference procedures. Infant and Child Development, 13(4), 341-348.

Namy, L. L., & Waxman, S. R. (2002). Patterns of spontaneous production of novel words and gestures within an experimental setting in children ages 1;6 and 2;2. Journal of Child Language, 29(4), 911-921.

Roy, P., & Chiat, S. (2004). A prosodically controlled word and nonword repetition task for 2-to 4-year-olds: Evidence from typically developing children. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 47(1), 223-234.

Saudino, K. J., Dale, P. S., Oliver, B., Petrill, S. A., Richardson, V., Rutter, M., et al. (1998). The validity of parent-based assessment of the cognitive abilities of 2-year-olds. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16(3), 349-363.

Woodward, A. L., & Hoyne, K. L. (1999). Infants' learning about words and sounds in relation to objects. Child Development, 70(1), 65-77.