Across three experiments, we examined 9‐ and 11‐month‐olds' mappings of novel sound properties to novel animal categories. Infants were familiarized with novel animal–novel sound pairings (e.g., Animal A [red]–Sound 1) and then tested on: (1) their acquisition of the original pairing and (2) their generalization of the sound property to a new member of a familiarized category (e.g., Animal A [blue]–Sound 1). When familiarized with a single exemplar of a category, 11‐month‐olds showed no evidence of acquiring or generalizing the animal–sound pairings. In contrast, 11‐month‐olds learnt the original animal–sound mappings and generalized the sound property to a novel member of that category when familiarized with multiple exemplars of a category. Finally, when familiarized with multiple exemplars, 9‐month‐old infants learnt the original animal–sound pairing, but did not extend the novel sound property. The results of these experiments provide evidence for developmental differences in the facilitative role of multiple exemplars in promoting the learning and generalization of information.

We investigated 16- and 20-month-olds' flexibility in mapping phonotactically illegal words to objects. Using an associative word-learning task, infants were presented with a training phase that either highlighted or did not highlight the referential status of a novel label. Infants were then habituated to two novel objects, each paired with a phonotactically illegal Czech word. When referential cues were provided, 16-, but not 20-month-olds, formed word-object mappings. In the absence of referential cues, infants of both ages failed to map the novel words. These findings illustrate the complex interplay between infants' developing sound system and their word learning abilities.

We examined the role of distinct labels on infants’ inductive inferences. Thirty-six 15-month-old infants were presented with target objects that possessed a non-obvious property, followed by test objects that varied in shape similarity relative to the target. Infants were tested in one of two groups, a Same Label group in which target and test objects were labeled with the same noun, and a Distinct Label group in which target and test objects were labeled with different nouns. When target and test objects were labeled with the same count noun, infants generalized the non-obvious property to both test objects, regardless of similarity to the target. In contrast, labeling the target and test objects with different count nouns attenuated infants’ generalization of the non-obvious property to both high and low-similarity test objects. Our results suggest that by 15 months, infants recognize that object labels provide information about underlying object kind and appreciate that distinct labels are used to designate members of different categories.

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