Marianella Casasola

Infant categorization of containment, support and tight‐fit spatial relationships

Two experiments examined infant categorization of containment, support or tight-fit spatial relationships. English-learning infants of 10 months (Experiment 1) and 18 months (Experiment 2) were habituated to four pairs of objects in one of these relationships. They were then tested with one event from habituation, one with novel objects in the familiar relationship, one with familiar objects in a novel relationship and one with novel objects in a novel relationship. Infants at both ages generalized their habituation of the containment relationship to novel objects in this relationship. In the support and tight-fit conditions, the younger infants responded only to the novel objects in the test while the older infants responded to the novel relationship, but only with familiar objects. The results indicate that infants learn to categorize containment prior to support or tight-fit relationships and suggest that infants can recognize a relationship between familiar objects prior to novel objects.

Learning to Form a Spatial Category of Tight-Fit Relations: How Experience With a Label Can Give a Boost

Two experiments explored the ability of 18-month-old infants to form an abstract categorical representation of tight-fit spatial relations in a visual habituation task. In Experiment 1, infants formed an abstract spatial category when hearing a familiar word (tight) during habituation but not when viewing the events in silence or when hearing a novel word. In Experiment 2, infants were given experience viewing and producing tight-fit relations while an experimenter labeled them with a novel word. Following this experience, infants formed the tight-fit spatial category in the visual habituation task, particularly when hearing the novel word again during habituation. Results suggest that even brief experience with a label and tight-fit relations can aid infants in forming an abstract categorical representation of tight-fit relations.

Getting Some Space: Infants’ and Caregivers’ Containment and Support Spatial Constructions during Play

Using a cross-sectional design, we examined the containment and support spatial constructions infants spontaneously create and those they observe when playing with a nesting toy. Infants (N=76) of 8, 13, or 18months played alone for 2min and then played with a caregiver for another 2min. At 8months, infants created few relations; at 13months, they inserted objects, resulting in containment, and stacked objects, resulting in support; at 18months, they created more than three times more containment relations than support relations, a result replicated in a second study. In contrast, caregivers created more support relations than containment relations, regardless of infant age, but labeled containment more than support. The results highlight differential exposure to containment and support in infant solitary and dyadic play. By 18months, infants gain greater firsthand experience with containment, a relation that is further reinforced by caregiver labeling.

Little Words, Big Impact: Determiners Begin to Bootstrap Reference by 12 Months

ABSTRACT We tested 12- and 18-month-old English-learning infants on a preferential-looking task which contrasted grammatically correct sentences using the determiner “the” vs. three ungrammatical conditions in which “the” was substituted by another English function word, a nonsense word, or omitted. Our design involved strict controls on phonetic composition of function words and co-articulation effects in the stimuli tested, which were absent in previous studies. The results show an overall significant effect of Function Word (FW), with no significant interaction effects between the two age groups. Overall, infants oriented faster to a target image and had more correct first looks at target following grammatical sentences. Tests within age groups show a significant effect of FW in 18-month-olds for both latency and correct first look, documenting a linguistic sensitivity, which persists over our new acoustic variables. In the 12-month-olds there was a significant effect of FW on first look, although no significant effect of FW for latency appeared. However, pairwise comparisons showed a significant difference between grammatical and ungrammatical FWs in latency even at this age. These findings suggest that some prototypical form of sensitivity to determiners in sentence processing and its use in computing noun reference exists already during early developmental stages surrounding the child’s first words. We speculate on potential explanations for developmental changes between 12 and 18 months.