Recent research demonstrated that although 24-month-old infants do well on the initial pairing of a novel word and novel object in fast-mapping tasks, they are unable to retain the mapping after a 5 min delay. The current study examines the role of familiarity with the objects and words on infants' ability to bridge between the initial fast…

Adopting a procedure developed with human speakers, we examined infants' ability to follow a nonhuman agent's gaze direction and subsequently to use its gaze to learn new words. When a programmable robot acted as the speaker (Experiment 1), infants followed its gaze toward the word referent whether or not it coincided with their own focus of…

Four experiments explored the processes that bridge between referent selection and word learning. Twenty-four-month-old infants were presented with several novel names during a referent selection task that included both familiar and novel objects and tested for retention after a 5-min delay. The 5-min delay ensured that word learning was based on…

Recently, infant researchers have reported sex differences in infants' capacity to map their representation of an occlusion sequence onto a subsequent no-occlusion display. The research reported here sought to identify the extent to which these sex differences are observed in event-mapping tasks and to identify the underlying basis for these…

Prior research suggests that when very simple event sequences are used, 4.5-month-olds demonstrate the ability to individuate objects based on the continuity or disruption of their speed of motion (Wilcox & Schweinle, 2003). However, infants demonstrate their ability to individuate objects in an event-monitoring task (i.e., infants must keep track…