The ability to identify individuals by voice is fundamental for communication. However, little is known about the expectations that infants hold when learning unfamiliar voices. Here, the voice-learning skills of 4- and 8-month-olds (N = 53; 29 girls, 14 boys of various ethnicities) were tested using a preferential-looking task that involved audiovisual stimuli of their mothers and other unfamiliar women. Findings reveal that the expectation that novel voices map on to novel faces emerges between 4 and 8 months of age, and that infants can retain learning of face-voice pairings via nonostensive cues by 8 months of age. This study provides new insights about infants’ use of disambiguation and fast mapping in early voice learning.

中文翻译：

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婴儿将新面孔映射到新声音

通过语音识别个人的能力是交流的基础。然而，人们对婴儿在学习陌生声音时的期望知之甚少。在这里，4 个月大和 8 个月大的孩子（N  = 53；29 名女孩，14 名不同种族的男孩）的语音学习技能进行了测试，该任务使用了一项涉及其母亲和其他不熟悉女性的视听刺激的优先任务。研究结果表明，在 4 到 8 个月大的时候出现了将新声音映射到新面孔的预期，并且婴儿可以在 8 个月大的时候通过非显性线索保持对面部声音配对的学习。这项研究提供了有关婴儿在早期语音学习中使用消歧和快速映射的新见解。