Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study investigated whether infants use iconicity in speech and gesture to interpret words. Thirty-six 14-17-month-old infants participated in a preferential looking task in which they heard a spoken non-word (e.g., “zudzud”) while observing a small and a large object (e.g., a small and a large square). All infants were presented with an iconic cue for object size (small or large) in 1) the pitch of the spoken non-word (high vs. low), 2) in gesture (small or large), or 3) congruently in both pitch and gesture (e.g., a high pitch and a small gesture indicating a small square). Infants did not show a preference for congruently sized objects in any iconic cue condition. Bayes Factor analyses supported the null hypotheses. In conclusion, we found no evidence that infants link the pitch of spoken non-words, or the iconic gestures accompanying those spoken non-words, to object size.