How do infants learn words for objects and how do they remember those words? Cognitive scientist, Linda Smith, of Indiana University, teamed up with a developmental psychologist and a roboticist to find the answers–they discovered that a baby’s posture and proximity to the object are critical in solving both these language acquisition problems. When a baby sees something and hears it named, their body position helps them connect these two features. Infants (and the robot) remembered the name-object even when the object was moved to a new location.
