Dog is a dog is a dog: Infant rule learning is not specific to language

Human infants possess powerful learning mechanisms used for the acquisition of language. To what extent are these mechanisms domain-specific? One well-known infant language learning mechanism is the ability to detect and generalize rule-like similarity patterns, such as ABA or ABB (Marcus et al., 1999). The results of three experiments demonstrate that 7-month-old infants can detect and generalize these same patterns when the elements consist of pictures of animals (dogs and cats). These findings indicate that rule learning of this type is not specific to language acquisition. A central issue in cognitive neuroscience concerns how the brain is functionally organized. One view is that discrete systems exist in the human brain for solving specific problems facing the organism, such as learning language or processing faces. Alternatively, learning mechanisms may operate more generally, with similar processes underlying multiple functions. Domain-specificity has recently become the focus of debates regarding infant language acquisition. Consistent with the existence of general learning mechanisms, human infants are able to track sequential statistical information (e.g., the probability that X predicts Y) i