Developmental Change in Infants’ Use of Cues to Word Meanings
Carmel Houston-Price
School of Psychology, University of Reading
Kim Plunkett
Dept. of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
Paul Harris
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Hester Duffy
Dept of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
Infants’ rapid vocabulary acquisition suggests that they are equipped with a range of
strategies for learning the meanings of new words from a very young age. This
research investigates 15- and 18-month-olds’ ability to use two different types of cues
to discover the meanings of words in ambiguous situations. A series of studies use
the intermodal preferential looking paradigm to explore whether, when two potential
referents are available, infants will preferentially attach a new label to (a) a moving
referent versus a stationary referent, (b) the referent towards which an adult gazes, (c)
a moving referent towards which an adult also gazes, and (d) a gazed-upon versus a
moving referent. Results suggest that by 15 months infants are highly sensitive to the
gaze direction cue, even in the presence of a conflicting movement cue. Use of the
movement cue is not robust, however, until infants reach 18 months of age.
The philosopher, Quine (1960), described the difficulty faced by the young child word
learner as follows: On hearing an adult use a new word (“gavagai”) as a rabbit runs
past, how can the child know whether the word refers to the category of rabbits, to
some part or property of the rabbit, to the manner of its movement or to its name?
The child clearly faces a further problem, that of knowing whether the word refers to
the rabbit at all, or instead to some other aspect of the scene, or indeed to something
that is not even present. Will the child assume that the word refers to the rabbit
because the speaker is looking at it, or because the rabbit is moving, thereby attracting
her attention?
It is this second aspect of the child’s dilemma that is the focus of this research.
Previous research has shown that young children are sensitive to the intention of the
user of a new word; the adult’s gaze direction, pointing and emotional expression
towards potential referents are all noticed and exploited by the child in her attempt to
establish the most likely meaning of the word. The learning environment itself also
provides clues to word meanings; for example, interesting objects and events are more
likely to be talked about. If the child is sensitive to this correlation, she might employ
the strategy of attaching words to more salient items in her environment. Hollich,
Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff et al. (2000) suggest that these strategies and others come into
use in a two-phase process where salience cues, such as object movement, are used
early in vocabulary acquisition while social cues, such as gaze direction, come into
use later. However, Moore, Angelopoulos and Bennett (1999) found the opposite
pattern of acquisition; while 24-month-olds used both cue types successfully, 18month-olds were limited to using the social cue.
This research uses an adaptation of the intermodal preferential looking paradigm
(Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley & Gordon, 1987) to explore the utility of social and
salience cues for infants aged 15 and 18 months. Infants were presented with a series
of trials. On each trial, two potential referents were presented on screen while a novel
label was heard. The target to be associated with the label was indicated either (a) by
its movement, (b) by the gaze direction of a face presented on screen, or (c) by both
cues in combination. In a fourth condition (d), the two cues provided conflicting
information about the reference of the novel word; the face looked at one image,
while the other moved. Infants’ learning of associations between words and images
was assessed by comparing their looking times to each image in the absence of any
cue other than the word heard. Longer looks towards the target were interpreted as
evidence of learning.
Results showed that the 15-month-olds were highly sensitive to the social cue,
reliably attaching new labels to gazed-upon images even in the presence of the
conflicting movement cue. A trend suggesting that these infants were sensitive to the
salience cue was also evident, but only the 18-month-olds reliably used this cue to
determine reference. These findings therefore provide some support for Moore et
al.’s (1999) claim that social cues are used before salience cues in the discovery of
word meaning (cf. Hollich et al., 2000). Interestingly, the older group showed no
sensitivity to the gaze direction of the adult, which might be explained in terms of
their greater understanding about the intentional nature of the cue, and their resulting
unwillingness to accept the disembodied face as having communicative intention.
Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Cauley, K. M., & Gordon, L. (1987). The eyes
have it: Lexical and syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm. Journal of
Child Language, 14, 23-45.
Hollich, G.J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R.M., Brand, R.J., Brown, E., Chung, H.L.,
Hennon, E., Rocroi, C. & Bloom, L. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An
emergentist model for the origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society
for Research in Child Development, 65 (3, Serial No. 262).
Moore, C., Angelopoulos, M., & Bennett, P. (1999). Word learning in the context of
referential and salience cues. Developmental Psychology, 35(1), 60-68.
Quine, W.V.O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.