Failure to show robust noun-referent associations in German-learning infants
Work with the looking-while-listening paradigm suggested that six-month-old English-learning infants associated several common nouns with pictures of their referents. This was evidenced by systematic fixations towards the named target picture (while one distractor picture was present). However, Norwegian-learning infants did not systematically fixate the target pictures until they were 8- to 9-months old, suggesting a cross-linguistic difference in the onset of noun comprehension. Moreover, their success in this task appeared to be modulated by aspects of stimulus pairing, specifically frequency differences between target and distractor: High (resp. low) frequent targets attracted more fixations if they were paired with low (resp. high) frequent distractors. In the present eye-tracking study, we tested 42 monolingual German-learning infants aged six to 14 months by means of a looking-while-listening paradigm. Infants saw two pictures side-by-side on a screen, whilst an unfamiliar male talker named one of both. Overall, infants did not fixate the target picture more than the distractor picture. In line with previous results, infants’ performance on the task was higher when the target and distractor word differed within their word frequency operationalized by the parental rating of word exposure. Therefore, our results further emphasize cross-linguistic differences in early word learning and strengthen the view that infants might use extra-linguistic cues within the stimulus pairing, such as frequency imbalance, to disambiguate between two potential referents.