Infants' Memory for Spoken Words

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 277; no. 5334; pp. 1984 - 1986
• Main Authors: Jusczyk, Peter W., Hohne, Elizabeth A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Society for the Advancement of Science 26-09-1997; American Association for the Advancement of Science; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Acoustic data; Babies; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Control Groups; Development; Developmental psychology; Experimentation; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Hearing tests; Humans; Infant; Infant development; Infants; Language acquisition; Language Development; Listening; Memory; Newborn. Infant; Phonetics; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development; Words; Young Children; Human; Verbal comprehension; Word; Memory; Infant; Cognition; Experimental study; Verbal communication; Learning; Retention interval; Hearing; Acquisition process; Language; Perception; Developmental stage
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5334.1984

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.