Dog is a Dog is a Dog: Infant Rule Learning is Not Specific to Language

Overview

Journal Cognition

Publisher Elsevier

Specialty Psychology

Date 2006 Dec 26

PMID 17188676

Citations 60

Authors

Jenny R Saffran

Seth D Pollak

Rebecca L Seibel

Anna Shkolnik

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Human infants possess powerful learning mechanisms used for the acquisition of language. To what extent are these mechanisms domain specific? One well-known infant language learning mechanism is the ability to detect and generalize rule-like similarity patterns, such as ABA or ABB [Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Rao, S. B., & Vishton, P. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science, 283, 77-80.]. The results of three experiments demonstrate that 7-month-old infants can detect and generalize these same patterns when the elements consist of pictures of animals (dogs and cats). These findings indicate that rule learning of this type is not specific to language acquisition.

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