TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding the abstract role of speech in communication at 12months
AU - Martin, Alia
AU - Onishi, Kristine H.
AU - Vouloumanos, Athena
N1 - Funding Information:
The research was funded by grants to A.V. and K.O. from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture, as well as NYU research funds to A.V. and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to K.O. We thank the members of the McGill Infant Development Centre and the NYU Infant Cognition and Communication Lab, Gary Marcus, Susan Carey, Paul Bloom, and Yuyan Luo for discussion, and the infants and parents who participated in our studies.
PY - 2012/4
Y1 - 2012/4
N2 - Adult humans recognize that even unfamiliar speech can communicate information between third parties, demonstrating an ability to separate communicative function from linguistic content. We examined whether 12-month-old infants understand that speech can communicate before they understand the meanings of specific words. Specifically, we test the understanding that speech permits the transfer of information about a Communicator's target object to a Recipient. Initially, the Communicator selectively grasped one of two objects. In test, the Communicator could no longer reach the objects. She then turned to the Recipient and produced speech (a nonsense word) or non-speech (coughing). Infants looked longer when the Recipient selected the non-target than the target object when the Communicator had produced speech but not coughing (Experiment 1). Looking time patterns differed from the speech condition when the Recipient rather than the Communicator produced the speech (Experiment 2), and when the Communicator produced a positive emotional vocalization (Experiment 3), but did not differ when the Recipient had previously received information about the target by watching the Communicator's selective grasping (Experiment 4). Thus infants understand the information-transferring properties of speech and recognize some of the conditions under which others' information states can be updated. These results suggest that infants possess an abstract understanding of the communicative function of speech, providing an important potential mechanism for language and knowledge acquisition.
AB - Adult humans recognize that even unfamiliar speech can communicate information between third parties, demonstrating an ability to separate communicative function from linguistic content. We examined whether 12-month-old infants understand that speech can communicate before they understand the meanings of specific words. Specifically, we test the understanding that speech permits the transfer of information about a Communicator's target object to a Recipient. Initially, the Communicator selectively grasped one of two objects. In test, the Communicator could no longer reach the objects. She then turned to the Recipient and produced speech (a nonsense word) or non-speech (coughing). Infants looked longer when the Recipient selected the non-target than the target object when the Communicator had produced speech but not coughing (Experiment 1). Looking time patterns differed from the speech condition when the Recipient rather than the Communicator produced the speech (Experiment 2), and when the Communicator produced a positive emotional vocalization (Experiment 3), but did not differ when the Recipient had previously received information about the target by watching the Communicator's selective grasping (Experiment 4). Thus infants understand the information-transferring properties of speech and recognize some of the conditions under which others' information states can be updated. These results suggest that infants possess an abstract understanding of the communicative function of speech, providing an important potential mechanism for language and knowledge acquisition.
KW - Cognitive development
KW - Communication
KW - Infant cognition
KW - Knowledge acquisition
KW - Psychological reasoning
KW - Speech perception
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.12.003
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.12.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 22209584
AN - SCOPUS:84856803420
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 123
SP - 50
EP - 60
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 1
ER -