Despite the prominence of non-visual semantic features for some words (e.g., siren or thunder), little is known about when and how the meanings of those words that refer to auditory objects can be acquired in early infancy. With associative learning being an important mechanism of word learning, we ask the question whether associations between sounds and words lead to similar learning effects as associations between visual objects and words. In an event-related potential (ERP) study, 10- to 12-month-old infants were presented with pairs of environmental sounds and pseudowords in either a consistent (where sound-word mapping can occur) or inconsistent manner. Subsequently, the infants were presented with sound-pseudoword combinations either matching or violating the consistent pairs from the training phase. In the training phase, we observed word-form familiarity effects and pairing consistency effects for ERPs time-locked to the onset of the word. The test phase revealed N400-like effects for violated pairs as compared to matching pairs. These results indicate that associative word learning is also possible for auditory objects before infants’ first birthday. The specific temporal occurrence of the N400-like effect and topological distribution of the ERPs suggests that the object’s modality has an impact on how novel words are processed.

尽管某些单词（例如，警报器或雷霆）的非视觉语义特征很突出，但人们对这些涉及听觉对象的单词的含义何时以及如何在婴儿早期获得的知之甚少。由于联想学习是单词学习的重要机制，我们提出这样的问题：声音和单词之间的关联是否会产生与视觉对象和单词之间的关联相似的学习效果。在一项事件相关电位 (ERP) 研究中，10 至 12 个月大的婴儿以一致（可能发生声音-单词映射）或不一致的方式呈现成对的环境声音和伪单词。随后，向婴儿提供声音-伪词组合，这些组合要么匹配，要么违反训练阶段的一致对。在训练阶段，我们观察到 ERP 的词形熟悉度效应和配对一致性效应与单词出现的时间锁定。测试阶段显示，与匹配对相比，违规对具有类似 N400 的效果。这些结果表明，在婴儿一岁生日之前，对于听觉对象进行联想单词学习也是可能的。 N400 效应的特定时间发生和 ERP 的拓扑分布表明，对象的模态对新词的处理方式有影响。