Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 26 September 1997:
Vol. 277. no. 5334, pp. 1984 - 1986
DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5334.1984
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Infants' Memory for Spoken Words

Peter W. Jusczyk, Elizabeth A. Hohne

Infants' long-term retention of the sound patterns of words was explored by exposing them to recordings of three children's stories for 10 days during a 2-week period when they were 8 months old. After an interval of 2 weeks, the infants heard lists of words that either occurred frequently or did not occur in the stories. The infants listened significantly longer to the lists of story words. By comparison, a control group of infants who had not been exposed to the stories showed no such preference. The findings suggest that 8-month-olds are beginning to engage in long-term storage of words that occur frequently in speech, which is an important prerequisite for learning language.

P. W. Jusczyk, Departments of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
E. A. Hohne, AT&T Labs, Holmdel, NJ 07733-3030, USA.

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Contributions of infant word learning to language development.
D. Swingley (2009)
Phil Trans R Soc B 364, 3617-3632
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Bilingual beginnings to learning words.
J. F. Werker, K. Byers-Heinlein, and C. T. Fennell (2009)
Phil Trans R Soc B 364, 3649-3663
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Music cognition in early infancy: infants' preferences and long-term memory for Ravel.
B. Ilari and L. Polka (2006)
International Journal of Music Education 24, 7-20
   Abstract »    PDF »
Early auditory experience generates long-lasting memories that may subserve vocal learning in songbirds.
M. L. Phan, C. L. Pytte, and D. S. Vicario (2006)
PNAS 103, 1088-1093
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Phonetic Detail in the Developing Lexicon.
D. Swingley (2003)
Language and Speech 46, 265-294
   Abstract »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)