Academic Journal
Infants' individual sensitivity to saliency shapes early word learning in social interaction.
| Title: | Infants' individual sensitivity to saliency shapes early word learning in social interaction. |
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| Authors: | Wildt E; Paderborn University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Germany. Electronic address: eugenia.wildt@upb.de., Singh A; Paderborn University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Germany. Electronic address: amit.singh@upb.de., Rohlfing KJ; Paderborn University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Germany. Electronic address: katharina.rohlfing@upb.de. |
| Source: | Acta psychologica [Acta Psychol (Amst)] 2026 Jun; Vol. 266, pp. 106977. Date of Electronic Publication: 2026 May 04. |
| Publication Type: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Journal Info: | Publisher: North Holland Publishing Country of Publication: Netherlands NLM ID: 0370366 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1873-6297 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00016918 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Acta Psychol (Amst) Subsets: MEDLINE |
| Imprint Name(s): | Publication: Amsterdam : North Holland Publishing Original Publication: The Hague. |
| MeSH Terms: | Verbal Learning*/physiology , Language Development* , Social Interaction*, Humans ; Male ; Female ; Infant ; Eye-Tracking Technology |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we conducted an extended analysis of an existing eye-tracking study (Wildt, 2023) investigating how infants' individual sensitivity to saliency shapes early word learning in social interaction. In a first phase of the study, 10-month-old infants participated in a saliency test for their attention. We used existing baseline data but applied a new analysis approach to model infants' attentional profiles-high and low preference group for salient stimuli. Afterwards, infants were exposed to the label of the referent and then participated in one of the two conditions of exploring it: In solo exploration condition (SE), infants were given the object to explore by their own; in the joint exploration condition (JE), infants could explore the object and its goal with the experimenter. In our new analysis of the test phase, we examined how differences in the sensitivity to the saliency influence infants' word learning based on the type of social interaction they receive. Our findings show that infants' looking behavior differed between JE and SE condition, with greater increases in target-directed looks over time in the JE condition. Moreover, only infants with low-preference for saliency in the JE condition successfully retrieved word-object links in all test trials. These results suggest that while joint actions can support attentional control, only infants with more balanced attention control benefit from joint actions in word learning. We conclude that early word learning is shaped by the sensitivity to the saliency in the environment, whereas social interaction helps infants to overcome the saliency bias. (Copyright © 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.) |
| Competing Interests: | Declaration of competing interest We hereby confirm that the submitted manuscript is the result of our original work and that all authors have contributed significantly to its conception, design, analysis, and writing. The research was conducted independently, and no unauthorized external contributions have been used in the preparation of the manuscript. All sources and contributions of others have been properly acknowledged and cited. The manuscript has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. We affirm that there are no undisclosed conflicts of interest that could be perceived as influencing the research. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission to Acta Psychologica. |
| Contributed Indexing: | Keywords: Attention; Bottom-up; Joint actions; Social interaction; Top-down; Word learning |
| Entry Date(s): | Date Created: 20260505 Date Completed: 20260804 Latest Revision: 20260804 |
| Update Code: | 20260804 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106977 |
| PMID: | 42085971 |
| Database: | MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1873-6297 |
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| DOI: | 10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106977 |