title: Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension.
abstract: A handful of recent experimental reports have shown that infants of 6 to 9 months know the meanings of some common words. Here, we replicate and extend these findings. With a new set of items, we show that when young infants (age 6-16 months, n=49) are presented with side-by-side video clips depicting various common early words, and one clip is named in a sentence, they look at the named video at above-chance rates. We demonstrate anew that infants understand common words by 6-9 months, and that performance increases substantially around 14 months. The results imply that 6-9 month olds' failure to understand words not referring to objects (verbs, adjectives, performatives) in a similar prior study is not attributable to the use of dynamic video depictions. Thus, 6-9 month olds' experience of spoken language includes some understanding of common words for concrete objects, but relatively impoverished comprehension of other words.
authors.affiliation: Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester Center for Language Sciences Meliora Hall Rochester, NY, 14627 U.S.A.
authors.forename: Elika
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bergelson
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognition Science 3401 Walnut St., 400a Philadelphia, PA, 19104 U.S.A.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Swingley