Twelve-Month-Old Infants Generalize Novel Signed Labels, but Not Preferences Across Individuals

Abstract

By the end of the 1st year, infants expect spoken labels to be extended across individuals and thus seem to understand words as shared conventional forms. However, it is unknown whether infants' willingness to extend labels across individuals is constrained to familiar forms, such as spoken words, or whether infants can identify a broader range of symbols as potential conventions. The present study tested whether 12-month-old infants will extend a novel sign label to a new person. Results indicate that 12-month-olds expect signed object–label relations to extend across agents but restrict object preferences to individuals. The results suggest that infants' expectations about conventional behaviors and linguistic forms are likely broad at 12 months. The implications of these findings for infants' early conceptions of conventional behaviors as well as our understanding of the initial state of the learner are considered.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant # R01-HD035707 to the third author.

We would like to thank Sarah Gerson, Erin Cannon, Lauren Howard, Laurie Eisenband, and Sarah DeWath, as well as all of the undergraduate research assistants at the University of Maryland Infant Studies Laboratory. Finally, we would like to thank the families who participated, without whom this research would not be possible.

Notes

Note. Mean standard errors are provided in parentheses.

*Different from the other test event, p < .05.

¹We also conducted paired t tests within the subsamples of infants who habituated in 14 trials. As with the full sample, infants in the signed-label condition (n = 14) who habituated looked reliably longer toward new-object test trials than to old-object test trials, t(13) = 3.55, p = .004, d = .99, r = .44. Also as in the full sample, infants in the preference condition who habituated (n = 12) did not look reliably longer toward either type of test trial, t(11) < 1, d = .10, r = .05.

²One infant in the preference condition had a baseline looking time greater than 2 standard deviations from the mean and was therefore removed from the recovery analysis.

³Parents recorded experience with baby signs but often did not clarify whether infants could only comprehend or could comprehend and produce a particular sign. Sign vocabularies ranged from 2 to 18 signs, with an average of 7.33 signs in infants' vocabularies.

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