Word Learning and the Origins of Phonological Systems

Introduction Only a few years ago many people presumed that learning language required explicit attention. The phenomenon of ‘joint attention’ (of caretaker and child to an object of interest) is widely accepted as constituting at least one of the foundations of language development (Tomasello 2003), and evidence that attention in early infancy can predict later levels of intelligence or word learning has also been reported (e.g., Ruddy and Bornstein 1982). However, recent experimental work with adults, infants and children has provided strong evidence of the power and importance of implicit learning, or learning that takes place outside of attentional focus (Gomez and Gerken, 1999).