The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing…

Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential…

Over their 1st year of life, infants' "universal" perception of the sounds of language narrows to encompass only those contrasts made in their native language (J. F. Werker & R. C. Tees, 1984). This research tested 40 infants in an eyetracking paradigm and showed that this pattern also holds for infants exposed to seen language--American Sign…

Noting that the last 30 years have seen enormous increases in the understanding of infancy, this book examines the current state of knowledge regarding infant development. The book's contents stem from meetings of the British Infancy Research Group. Although the book was intended for advanced undergraduates, it would also be useful for advanced…

This monograph is a collection of papers describing a series of loosely related studies of visual attention, auditory stimulation, and language discrimination in young infants. Titles include: (1) Infant Attention and Discrimination: Methodological and Substantive Issues; (2) The Addition of Auditory Stimulation (Music) and an Interspersed…