title: The impact of novel labels on visual processing during infancy.
abstract: The impact of novel labels on visual processing was investigated across two experiments with infants aged between 9 and 21 months. Infants viewed pairs of images across a series of preferential looking trials. On each trial, one image was novel, and the other image had previously been viewed by the infant. Some infants viewed images in silence; other infants viewed images accompanied by novel labels. The pattern of fixations both across and within trials revealed that infants in the labelling condition took longer to develop a novelty preference than infants in the silent condition. Our findings contrast with prior research by Robinson and Sloutsky (e.g., Robinson & Sloutsky, 2007a; Sloutsky & Robinson, 2008) who found that novel labels did not disrupt visual processing for infants aged over a year. Provided that overall task demands are sufficiently high, it appears that labels can disrupt visual processing for infants during the developmental period of establishing a lexicon. The results suggest that when infants are processing labels and objects, attentional resources are shared across modalities.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, UK. emily.mather@psy.ox.ac.uk
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mather
authors.forename: Graham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schafer
authors.forename: Carmel
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Houston-Price
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*