Memory constraints on infants’ cross-situational statistical learning

Infants are able to map linguistic labels to referents in the world by tracking co-occurrence probabilities across learning events, a behavior often termed cross-situational statistical learning. This study builds upon existing research by examining infants’ developing ability to aggregate and retri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition 2013-06, Vol.127 (3), p.375-382
Main Authors: Vlach, Haley A., Johnson, Scott P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Biological and medical sciences
Child Development
Cross-situational learning
Developmental psychology
Eye Movements
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Infant
Infants
Language Acquisition
Language Development
Learning
Learning - physiology
Male
Mathematics
Memory
Memory - physiology
Memory development
Newborn. Infant
Psycholinguistics
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Statistical learning
Statistics
Vocabulary
Word mapping
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Summary:Infants are able to map linguistic labels to referents in the world by tracking co-occurrence probabilities across learning events, a behavior often termed cross-situational statistical learning. This study builds upon existing research by examining infants’ developing ability to aggregate and retrieve word-referent pairings over time. 16- and 20-month-old infants (N=32) were presented with a cross-situational statistical learning task in which half of the object-label pairings were presented in immediate succession (massed) and half were distributed across time (interleaved). Results revealed striking developmental differences in word mapping performance; infants in both age groups were able to learn pairings presented in immediate succession, but only 20-month-old infants were able to correctly infer pairings distributed over time. This work reveals significant constraints on infants’ ability to aggregate and retrieve object-label pairings across time and challenges theories of cross-situational statistical learning that rest on retrieval processes as successful and automatic.
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.02.015