Can 18-month-old infants learn words by listening in on conversations?

Abstract

Previous research has shown that children as young as 2 can learn words from 3rd-party conversations (Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). The focus of this study was to determine whether younger infants could learn a new word through overhearing. Novel object labels were introduced to 18-month-old infants in 1 of 2 conditions: directly by an experimenter or in the context of overhearing the experimenter use the word while interacting with another adult. The findings suggest that, when memory demands are not too high, 18-month-old infants can learn words through overhearing. Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.