1. Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203, USA
2. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

Correspondence to: Susan J. Hespos¹ Email: s.hespos@vanderbilt.edu

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 language^{1, 2, 3}, and this sensitivity reflects basic properties of the auditory system rather than mechanisms specific to language^{4, 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 another^{9, 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 animals^{12, 13, 14}. Language learning therefore seems to develop by linking linguistic forms to universal, pre-existing representations of sound and meaning.

1. Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203, USA
2. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

Correspondence to: Susan J. Hespos¹ Email: s.hespos@vanderbilt.edu

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