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Infants’ Mapping of New Faces to New Voices
Author(s) -
Orena Adriel John,
Werker Janet F.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.13616
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , face (sociological concept) , ethnic group , linguistics , philosophy , management , sociology , anthropology , economics
The ability to identify individuals by voice is fundamental for communication. However, little is known about the expectations that infants hold when learning unfamiliar voices. Here, the voice‐learning skills of 4‐ and 8‐month‐olds ( N = 53; 29 girls, 14 boys of various ethnicities) were tested using a preferential‐looking task that involved audiovisual stimuli of their mothers and other unfamiliar women. Findings reveal that the expectation that novel voices map on to novel faces emerges between 4 and 8 months of age, and that infants can retain learning of face‐voice pairings via nonostensive cues by 8 months of age. This study provides new insights about infants’ use of disambiguation and fast mapping in early voice learning.