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Abstract:
Most words that infants hear occur within fluent speech. To compile a
vocabulary, infants therefore need to segment words from speech contexts.
This study is the first to investigate whether infants (here: 10-month-olds)
can recognize words when both initial exposure and test presentation are in
continuous speech. Electrophysiological evidence attests that this indeed
occurs: An increased extended negativity (word recognition effect) appears
for familiarized target words relative to control words. This response proved
constant at the individual level: Only infants who showed this negativity at
test had shown such a response, within six repetitions after first occurrence,
during familiarization.
