Study 1
In study 1, 15-month-old infants exhibited a novelty preference away from a neighborhood target, after being familiarized in the head-turn preference procedure with twelve lists of twelve neighbors. This effect was observed regardless of whether or not the target was contained in the familiarization set. This suggests that, even by 15 months, infants are capable of detecting the neighborhood similarity among words. They also appear to be demonstrating what Sommers (1999) has called “phonological false memories.”