Language Acquisition Experiments and Key Concepts

Vocabulary flashcards summarizing classic experiments and core concepts in early language acquisition.

Jusczyk & Aslin (1995)

Using the Head-Turn Preference procedure, found that 6-month-old infants can segment familiar words from fluent speech, but only when those words are embedded among other familiar words.

Saffran, Aslin & Newport (1996)

Revealed that 8-month-olds rely on transitional (syllable-to-syllable) probabilities to segment words from a 2-minute artificial speech stream, illustrating statistical learning.

Hauser, Newport & Aslin (2001)

Showed cotton-top tamarins track the same statistical regularities as human infants, suggesting statistical learning is domain-general and not uniquely human.

Toro & Trobalón (2005)

Demonstrated that rats also learn syllable statistics for word segmentation, further supporting a domain-general mechanism for statistical learning.

Baldwin (1993)

Found that toddlers map a novel word to the object an experimenter is looking at rather than to the one they themselves are attending to, highlighting the role of gaze in word learning.

Baldwin (1991)

Compared follow-in vs. discrepant labeling and showed infants use a speaker’s gaze to map new labels, with older infants succeeding more reliably than younger ones.

Baldwin (1996)

Demonstrated that children fail to learn new words if the speaker is in another room, emphasizing that visible communicative intent is crucial for word learning.

Baron-Cohen, Baldwin & Crowson (1997)

Autistic children did not map labels using gaze cues, underscoring the importance of joint attention mechanisms for typical language acquisition.

Akhtar, Carpenter & Tomasello (1996)

Showed children assign a novel label to the object that is ‘new’ in the discourse, even if only new to the speaker, indicating sensitivity to discourse novelty.

Koenig & Woodward (2010)

Found that preschoolers prefer to learn new words from previously accurate over inaccurate speakers, revealing early selective trust in testimony.

Maurer, Pathman & Mondloch (2006)

Documented the Bouba-Kiki sound-symbolism effect in children (~70% accuracy) and adults (~83%), linking speech sounds to visual shape perception.

Markman & Hutchinson (1984)

Showed that children (and adults) extend a novel noun to taxonomically related items rather than thematically related ones, supporting the taxonomic bias.

Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff (2007)

Using eye-tracking, confirmed the Whole-Object Assumption: children interpret a novel label as referring to an entire object rather than its parts.

Srinivasan, Barner & Brooks (2019)

Argued that children apply Mutual Exclusivity even without a present speaker, whereas adults apply it even to their own self-generated labels, implying a pragmatic basis.

Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk & Vigorito (1971)

With the High-Amplitude Sucking paradigm, showed 4-month-olds perceive phoneme categories (/ba/ vs. /pa/) categorically, dishabituating at category boundaries.

DeCasper & Fifer (1980); Mehler et al. (1988)

Newborns prefer their mother’s voice and their native language over others, indicating early auditory tuning to familiar linguistic input.

DeCasper & Spence (1986)

Found that infants prefer stories read to them prenatally, demonstrating memory for linguistic input heard in utero.

Mampe, Friederici, Christophe & Wermke (2009)

Discovered that newborns’ cry melodies mirror the prosody of the language heard during gestation, suggesting prenatal prosodic learning.

Werker & Tees (1984)

Showed that by 10–12 months, infants lose the ability to discriminate non-native phonemes, exemplifying perceptual narrowing.

Head-Turn Preference Procedure

An infant method in which looking or turning to a sound source is measured to infer discrimination, preference, or segmentation of speech.

High-Amplitude Sucking Paradigm

Newborn/infant experimental method that tracks changes in sucking rate to indicate discrimination or preference for auditory stimuli.

Statistical Learning

The ability to extract patterns—such as transitional probabilities—within sensory input; fundamental for word segmentation in infants, monkeys, and rats.

Joint Attention

A social communicative state in which child and caregiver attend to the same object or event, critical for mapping words to referents.

Whole-Object Assumption

Bias to map a new label onto an entire object rather than its parts or features, facilitating rapid vocabulary growth.

Mutual Exclusivity

Assumption that each object has only one label; leads children to map a new word to an unnamed object when a familiar object is present.