The DOI matches its Crossref record; 51 of the 51 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Words in a sea of sounds: the output of infant statistical learning
Abstract
One of the first problems confronting infant language learners is word segmentation: discovering the boundaries between words. Prior research suggests that 8-month-old infants can detect the statistical patterns that serve as a cue to word boundaries. However, the representational structure of the output of this learning process is unknown. This research assessed the extent to which statistical learning generates novel word-like units, rather than probabilistically-related strings of sounds. Eight-month-old infants were familiarized with a continuous stream of nonsense words with no acoustic cues to word boundaries. A post-familiarization test compared the infants' responses to words versus part-words (sequences spanning a word boundary) embedded either in simple English contexts familiar to the infants (e.g. "I like my tibudo"), or in matched nonsense frames (e.g. "zy fike ny tibudo"). Listening preferences were affected by the context (English versus nonsense) in which the items from the familiarization phase were embedded during testing. A second experiment confirmed that infants can discriminate the simple English contexts and the matched nonsense frames used in Experiment 1. The third experiment replicated the results of Experiment 1 by contrasting the English test frames with non-linguistic frames generated from tone sequences. The results support the hypothesis that statistical learning mechanisms generate word-like units with some status relative to the native languag…
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Taken together, Saffran (2001) and Graf Estes et al.'s (2007) studies suggest that infants treat high probability items, and thus the output of statistical learning, as possible native language words rather than merely sound sequences with high internal probabilities but no linguistic relevance.”
From Statistically coherent labels facilitate categorization in 8-month-olds (2014) · cites this paper as Saffran (2001)
In the citing paper
“The difference in categorization performance as a function of label statistical structure indicates that the output of statistical learning shares properties of real words, consistent with theories that posit that statistical learning yields word-like representations (e.g., Saffran, 2001; Swingley, 2005).”
From Statistically coherent labels facilitate categorization in 8-month-olds (2014) · cites this paper as Saffran, 2001
Citations
Cites
Elman, J. L. (1990) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1402_1 · Cited by 11,212
Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.274.5294.1926 · Cited by 5,659
Self-citationWerker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/s0163-6383(84)80022-3 · Cited by 2,801
Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age
Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., Lacerda, F., Stevens, K. N., & Lindblom, B. (1992) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1736364 · Cited by 2,086
A precursor of language acquisition in young infants
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P. W., Dehaene‐Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., & Amiel‐Tison, C. (1988) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/0010-0277(88)90035-2 · Cited by 1,662
Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults
Saffran, J. R., Johnson, E. K., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1999) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(98)00075-4 · Cited by 1,429
Self-citationRule Learning by Seven-Month-Old Infants
Marcus, G., Vijayan, S., Rao, S. B., & Vishton, P. M. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.283.5398.77 · Cited by 1,246
Computation of conditional probability statistics by 8-month-old infants
Aslin, R. N., Saffran, J. R., & Newport, E. L. (1998) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00063 · Cited by 1,189
Self-citationLipsitt, L. P., & Rovee‐Collier, C. (1981) · Ablex Publishing Corp. eBooks · Cited by 1,146
Infants′ Detection of the Sound Patterns of Words in Fluent Speech
Jusczyk, P. W., & Aslin, R. N. (1995) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1006/cogp.1995.1010 · Cited by 1,061
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Aslin, R. N. (2000). Interpretation of infant listening times using the headturn preference technique. Talk presented at the International Conference on Infancy Studies, Brighton, UK.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations
Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1 · Cited by 1,437
Goldberg, A. E. (2005) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268511.001.0001 · Cited by 1,222
Implicit learning and statistical learning: one phenomenon, two approaches
Perruchet, P., & Pacton, S. (2006) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.03.006 · Cited by 830
Statistical Language Learning: Mechanisms and Constraints
Saffran, J. R. (2003) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01243 · Cited by 624
Self-citationThiessen, E. D., & Saffran, J. R. (2003) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/0012-1649.39.4.706 · Cited by 579
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Saffran, J. R.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Saffran, Jenny R
- ORCID
- Saffran, Jenny R
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2001-09
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 149-169
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2159265825
- Cited by
- 352
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 72 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 11
- FWCI
- 11.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 03352, HD37466, P30HD003352)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- word segmentation, word boundaries, context effects, listening preferences, tone sequences, language acquisition, infant language acquisition
- MeSH terms
- Auditory Perception, Child Development, Female, Humans, Infant, Language Development, Male, Noise, Semantics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
