Accessibility navigation


Watching the infant brain learn words: Effects of vocabulary size and experience

Mills , D. L., Plunkett, K., Prat, C. and Schafer, G. (2005) Watching the infant brain learn words: Effects of vocabulary size and experience. Cognitive Development, 20 (1). pp. 19-31. ISSN 0885-2014

Full text not archived in this repository.

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2004.07.001

Abstract/Summary

Previous investigations comparing auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to words whose meanings infants did or did not comprehend, found bilateral differences in brain activity to known versus unknown words in 13-month-old infants, in contrast with unilateral, left hemisphere, differences in activity in 20-month-old infants. We explore two alternative explanations for these findings. Changes in hemispheric specialization may result from a qualitative shift in the way infants process known words between 13 and 20 months. Alternatively, hemispheric specialization may arise from increased familiarity with the individual words tested. We contrasted these two explanations by measuring ERPs from 20-month-old infants with high and low production scores, for novel words they had just learned. A bilateral distribution of ERP differences was observed in both groups of infants, though the difference was larger in the left hemisphere for the high producers. These findings suggest that word familiarity is an important factor in determining the distribution of brain regions involved in word learning. An emerging left hemispheric specialization may reflect increased efficiency in the manner in which infants process familiar and novel words. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Development
Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
ID Code:4545
Uncontrolled Keywords:language acquisition; vocabulary spurt; word learning; event related potentials; lexical development; semantic development; familiarity
Publisher:Elsevier Science Inc

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

Page navigation