Can you see what I am talking about? Human speech triggers referential expectation in four-month-old infants.

ABSTRACT: Infants' sensitivity to selectively attend to human speech and to process it in a unique way has been widely reported in the past. However, in order to successfully acquire language, one should also understand that speech is a referential, and that words can stand for other entities in the world. While there has been some evidence showing that young infants can make inferences about the communicative intentions of a speaker, whether they would also appreciate the direct relationship between a specific word and its referent, is still unknown. In the present study we tested four-month-old infants to see whether they would expect to find a referent when they hear human speech. Our results showed that compared to other auditory stimuli or to silence, when infants were listening to speech they

SUBMITTER: Marno H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4555167 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature