Categorization in 3- and 4-Month-Old Infants: An Advantage of Words Over Tones

Authors: Ferry, Alissa L.; Hespos, Susan J.; Waxman, Sandra R.

Source: Child Development, Volume 81, Number 2, March/April 2010 , pp. 472-479(8)

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Abstract:

Neonates prefer human speech to other nonlinguistic auditory stimuli. However, it remains an open question whether there are any conceptual consequences of words on object categorization in infants younger than 6 months. The current study examined the influence of words and tones on object categorization in forty-six 3- to 4-month-old infants. Infants were familiarized to different exemplars of a category accompanied by either a labeling phrase or a tone sequence. In test, infants viewed novel category and new within-category exemplars. Infants who heard labeling phrases provided evidence of categorization at test while infants who heard tone sequences did not, suggesting that infants as young as 3 months of age treat words and tones differently vis-à-vis object categorization.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01408.x

Affiliations: 1: Northwestern University

Publication date: 2010-03-01