Intersensory Redundancy and 7-Month-Old Infants' Memory for Arbitrary Syllable-Object Relations

Date of this Version

1-1-2001

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Seven-month-old infants require redundant information, such as temporal synchrony, to learn arbitrary syllable-object relations (Gogate & Bahrick, 1998). Infants learned the relations between 2 spoken syllables, /a/ and /i/, and 2 moving objects only when temporal synchrony was present during habituation. This article presents 2 experiments to address infants' memory for these relations. In Experiment 1, infants remembered the syllable-object relations after 10 min, only when temporal synchrony between the vocalizations and moving objects was provided during learning. In Experiment 2, 7-month-olds were habituated to the same syllable-object pairs in the presence of temporal synchrony and tested for memory after 4 days. Once again, infants learned and showed emerging memory for the syllable-object relations 4 days after original learning under the temporally synchronous condition. These findings are consistent with the view that prior to symbolic development, infants learn and remember word-object relations by perceiving redundant information in the vocal and gestural communication of adults.

DOI

10.1207/S15327078IN0202_7

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