[PS-2.6] Discovering Noun And Verb Precursors During Language Acquisition

Jara, C. & Peña, M. .

Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

We explored whether and how 4-6 months old infants may discover words associated to objects and actions, from a series of continuous audio-visual streams where some labels systematically co-occurred with static face (for noun-like label) while others co-occurred with moving face (for verb-like label).
Preliminary results show that infants were able to learn noun-like labels referred to static faces, but they did not learn labels referring verb-like labels referred to moving faces.
We conclude that from very early age infants can exploit systematic association between what they hear and what they see in order to have a ?rudimentary knowledge of grammatical categories?.
Shed lights on this question will contribute to a deeper understanding of how infants develop an early recognition of grammatical categories.