Examined role of isolated words in early vocabulary development. Found that isolated words are a reliable feature of speech to infants; that they include a variety of word types; and that a substantial fraction of words infants produce are words that mothers speak in isolation. Frequency of hearing words in isolation better predicts learning than…

This brief report attempts to resolve the claim that infants preferentially attend to continuous variables over number [e.g. Psychol. Sci. 10 (1999) 408; Cognit. Psychol.44 (2002) 33] with the finding that when continuous variables are controlled, infants as young as 6-months of age discriminate large numerical values [e.g. Psychol. Sci. 14 (2003)…