| Summary: | This series of studies investigated the ability of 14-month-old
infants to differentiate similar-sounding words in a word-object association
task. Despite the remarkable speech perception abilities previously
demonstrated in young infants, studies of word learning in older infants
indicate they have difficulty learning similar-sounding words. This evidence
suggests that infants may not be using their remarkable speech-perception
abilities as they move into word learning. The purpose of my research was to
test for evidence of the ability to form word-object associations for similar
sounding words, at an early stage of word learning.
Previous research has demonstrated infants are able to learn word-object
associations for words that do not sound similar (Werker, Cohen, &
Lloyd, 1995). The present studies used a similar design, in which infants are
habituated to either one or two word-object pairings and are then tested with
a pairing where either the object or the label is switched from those presented
in the habituation phase. Across a series of three experiments it was
demonstrated that infants notice when the switch that occurs is a switch in
the object, but not when the switch is a switch in the label. This suggests older
infants do have difficulty learning phonetically similar word-object
associations. === Arts, Faculty of === Psychology, Department of === Graduate
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