The role of skin color in six-month-olds' comprehension of words for parts of the body

Infants viewed six sets of hand and feet stimuli from unfamiliar adults who varied in age, sex, and skin pigmentation while being tested with repetitions of the spoken words “hand” and “feet”. If infants have some ability for extending known labels to novel exemplars, then, when a spoken label is presented, they should look longer at the matching video than at the video that does not match, across all the stimuli sets. If infants’ comprehension ability is limited, then they will show no difference in their looking times to the matching and nonmatching videos, or they might only show a matching response for certain stimuli sets. Data was collected with the preferential looking procedure and parent report questionnaires.