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Unimodal word and action learning
- Sarah Eiteljoerge
- Birgit Elsner
- Nivedita Mani
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Description: Word-object and action-object learning in children aged 30 to 48 months appear to develop at a similar time scale and adhere to similar attentional constraints. However, children below 36 months show different patterns of learning word-object and action-object associations when this information is presented in a bimodal context (Eiteljoerge et al., 2019b). Here, we investigated 12- and 24-month-olds’ word-object and action-object learning when this information is presented in a unimodal context. Forty 12- and 24-month-olds were presented with two novel objects that were either first associated with a novel label (word learning task) and then later with a novel action (action learning task), or vice versa. In subsequent yoked test phases, children either heard one of the novel labels or saw a hand performing one of the actions were then presented with the two objects on screen while we measured their target looking. GLMMs indicate that 12-month-olds learned action-object associations but not word-object associations, and 24-month-olds learned neither word- nor action-object associations. These results extend previous findings (Eiteljoerge et al., 2019b), and together, suggest that children appear to learn action-object associations early in development while struggling with learning word-object associations in certain contexts until two years of age.