Infants as Young as 15 Months Capable of Learning Words for Invisible Objects

Recent research has expanded our understanding of early language acquisition by demonstrating that infants as young as 15 months can grasp the meaning of words referring to objects they have never seen before. This groundbreaking study from Northwestern University and Harvard University reveals that young children utilize contextual cues from conversations to form mental representations of unfamiliar objects, even when those objects are hidden from view.

Language allows humans to learn names for things without direct experience, seamlessly inferring meanings through contextual clues. The key question addressed by researchers was: How early does this ability develop, and what cognitive processes enable infants to create mental images of unseen objects?

The study involved 134 infants, divided into two groups of 67 each at 12 and 15 months old. The researchers presented familiar objects with known names and then introduced novel words alongside hidden images of new objects. Later, children were asked to identify the target object among others. The 15-month-olds, unlike the 12-month-olds, reliably looked longer at the correct novel object when prompted, indicating they had formed an initial mental representation of the unseen item based solely on linguistic context.

Lead researcher Sandra Waxman explained that even infants just beginning to produce words can use conversational contexts to learn about objects that are not immediately visible. "This shows that babies, by 15 months, are capable of taking in the spoken language around them and forming robust mental 'gist' of new words, which they can later use to recognize the objects," Waxman noted.

The study offers new insights into how early humans develop the ability to understand and learn from language, highlighting the importance of context from a very young age. It suggests that even in everyday situations, infants are actively interpreting and hypothesizing about words and their meanings, supporting the development of mental representations for objects they have not directly experienced.

This understanding emphasizes the powerful role of language in early cognitive and linguistic development. Infants are not merely passive receivers of words but active learners who leverage linguistic input to form meaningful concepts, even when the referents are absent at the moment of hearing.

For further details, the full study is published in PLOS One and provides significant advancements in the field of developmental psycholinguistics, illustrating that the capability to associate words with unseen objects begins as early as 15 months of age.