ABSTRACT
The event-related potentials (ERP) represents voltage fluctuations at the scalp surface, which result from activity within brain structures involved in the processing of a certain stimulus type. This chapter illustrates what kind of conclusions can be drawn when applying the ERP method to infant research. It focuses on the experimentally induced acquisition of novel word meanings in infants from 3 to 16 months of age. A semantic word processing stage is effectively established at 6 months, suggesting that word meanings built at that age can go beyond perceptually based associations. Infant ERP components are utilized to determine the nature of infants' newly established words in temporary and long-term memory. The absence of a comprehension effect in the category–word condition implies that infants did not encode general information about the category–word pairings. The results of infant ERP word learning studies have several implications for the development of word meanings and our view on the nature of infants' early words.
