Haptic perception in infancy and first acquisition of object words: Developmental and clinical approach

Abstract

To recognise the properties of physical objects and build a mental representation of them is a prerequisite for the acquisition of words referring to objects, words that hold a key role in early lexical development. Object words account for about 60% of nominals. Words that name solid objects encode the first set of meaning, they can be understood by a healthy infant beginning between the 10th and 12th month and, soon after, be reproduced in child-specific language [1-6]. At first object words are generalised to new instances on the basis of perceivable similarities.