Conceptual precursors to language

Susan J. Hespos () and Elizabeth S. Spelke
Additional contact information
Susan J. Hespos: Vanderbilt University
Elizabeth S. Spelke: Harvard University

Nature, 2004, vol. 430, issue 6998, 453-456

Abstract: Abstract Because human languages vary in sound and meaning, children must learn which distinctions their language uses. For speech perception, this learning is selective: initially infants are sensitive to most acoustic distinctions used in any language1,2,3, and this sensitivity reflects basic properties of the auditory system rather than mechanisms specific to language4,5,6,7; however, infants' sensitivity to non-native sound distinctions declines over the course of the first year8. Here we ask whether a similar process governs learning of word meanings. We investigated the sensitivity of 5-month-old infants in an English-speaking environment to a conceptual distinction that is marked in Korean but not English; that is, the distinction between ‘tight’ and ‘loose’ fit of one object to another9,10. Like adult Korean speakers but unlike adult English speakers, these infants detected this distinction and divided a continuum of motion-into-contact actions into tight- and loose-fit categories. Infants' sensitivity to this distinction is linked to representations of object mechanics11 that are shared by non-human animals12,13,14. Language learning therefore seems to develop by linking linguistic forms to universal, pre-existing representations of sound and meaning.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02634 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:430:y:2004:i:6998:d:10.1038_nature02634

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02634

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().