Titel
In the absence of visual input: Electrophysiological evidence of infants’ mapping of labels onto auditory objects
Autor*in
Samuel H. Cosper
Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück
Claudia Männel
Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Abstract
Despite the prominence of non-visual semantic features for some words (e.g., siren or thunder), little is known about when and how the meanings of those words that refer to auditory objects can be acquired in early infancy. With associative learning being an important mechanism of word learning, we ask the question whether associations between sounds and words lead to similar learning effects as associations between visual objects and words. In an event-related potential (ERP) study, 10- to 12-month-old infants were presented with pairs of environmental sounds and pseudowords in either a consistent (where sound-word mapping can occur) or inconsistent manner. Subsequently, the infants were presented with sound-pseudoword combinations either matching or violating the consistent pairs from the training phase. In the training phase, we observed word-form familiarity effects and pairing consistency effects for ERPs time-locked to the onset of the word. The test phase revealed N400-like effects for violated pairs as compared to matching pairs. These results indicate that associative word learning is also possible for auditory objects before infants’ first birthday. The specific temporal occurrence of the N400-like effect and topological distribution of the ERPs suggests that the object’s modality has an impact on how novel words are processed.
Stichwort
Word learningAssociative learningEvent-related potentialEEGLanguage acquisitionAuditory modality
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
Erschienen in
Titel
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Band
45
ISSN
1878-9293
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Publication
Elsevier BV
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Zugänglichkeit
Rechteangabe
© 2020 The Authors
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