Getting there faster: 18- and 24-month-old infants' use of function words to determine reference.
Infants of 18 and 24 months acquiring English were tested in a preferential looking task on their ability to detect ungrammaticalities caused by manipulating a single function word in sentences. Infants heard grammatical sentences in which the determiner the preceded a target noun, as well as three ungrammatical conditions in which the was either dropped, replaced by a nonsense function word (el), or replaced by an alternate English function word (and). Both the 18- and 24-month-old infants oriented faster and more accurately to a visual target following grammatical sentences. The results suggest that by 18 months of age, infants use their knowledge of determiners in sentence computation and in establishing reference.
Kedar
Yarden
Y
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. yek2@cornell.edu
Casasola
Marianella
M
Lust
Barbara
B
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014796:Visual Perception; D014825:Vocabulary