Infants who are rarely spoken to nevertheless understand many words.

Theories of language development-informed largely by studies of Western, middleclass infants-have highlighted the language that caregivers direct to children as a key driver of language learning. However, some have argued that language development unfolds similarly across environmental contexts, including those in which childdirected language is scarce. This raises the possibility that children are able to learn from other sources of language in their environments, particularly the language directed to others in their environment. We explore this hypothesis with infants in an indigenous Tseltal-speaking community in Southern Mexico who are rarely spoken to, yet have the opportunity to overhear a great deal of other-directed language by virtue of being carried on their mothers' backs. Adapting a previously established gaze-tracking method for detecting early word knowledge to our field setting, we find that Tseltal infants exhibit implicit knowledge of common nouns (Exp. 1), analogous to their US peers who are frequently spoken to. Moreover, they exhibit comprehension of Tseltal honorific terms that are exclusively used to greet adults in the community (Exp. 2), representing language that could only have been learned through overhearing. In so doing, Tseltal infants demonstrate an ability to discriminate words with similar meanings and perceptually similar referents at an earlier age than has been shown among Western children. Together, these results suggest that for some infants, learning from overhearing may be an important path toward developing language.

The effects of overhearing on vocabulary learning in ethnic majority and minority preschool children.

Research shows that infants and preschoolers can learn novel words equally well through addressed speech as through overhearing two adults. However, most of this research draws from samples of ethnic majority children. The current study compares word learning in preschoolers (M age = 5;6) with an ethnic minority and an ethnic majority background (N = 132). An experimenter of the majority group (representative for most teachers in Flemish education) told a story in three different interaction situations: Addressed Speech, Overhearing Classroom and Overhearing Two Adults. Results show that children of both ethnic groups learn novel words in Addressed Speech and in Overhearing Classroom equally well. However, minority children learned significantly fewer words in Overhearing Two Adults. This study suggests important differences in how ethnic majority and minority children learn through indirect speech in educational (monolingual) settings. In addition, the study scrutinizes the potential role of social identification in overhearing mechanisms.

Young children are more likely to cheat after overhearing that a classmate is smart.

Research on moral socialization has largely focused on the role of direct communication and has almost completely ignored a potentially rich source of social influence: evaluative comments that children overhear. We examined for the first time whether overheard comments can shape children's moral behavior. Three- and 5-year-old children (N = 200) participated in a guessing game in which they were instructed not to cheat by peeking. We randomly assigned children to a condition in which they overheard an experimenter tell another adult that a classmate who was no longer present is smart, or to a control condition in which the overheard conversation consisted of non-social information. We found that 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, cheated significantly more often if they overheard the classmate praised for being smart. These findings show that the effects of ability praise can spread far beyond the intended recipient to influence the behavior of children who are mere observers, and they suggest that overheard evaluative comments can be an important force in shaping moral development.

Toddlers' word learning through overhearing: Others' attention matters.

In laboratory settings children are able to learn new words from overheard interactions, yet in naturalistic contexts this is often not the case. We investigated the degree to which joint attention within the overheard interaction facilitates overheard learning. In the study, 20 2-year-olds were tested on novel words they had been exposed to in two different overhearing contexts: one in which both interlocutors were attending to the interaction and one in which one interlocutor was not attending. Participants learned the new words only in the former condition, indicating that they did not learn when joint attention was absent. This finding demonstrates that not all overheard interactions are equally good for word learning; attentive interlocutors are crucial when learning words through overhearing.

Young children protest against the incorrect use of novel words: Toward a normative pragmatic account on language acquisition.

The current study examined whether young children conceive of language use as a normative practice. To this end, 3- and 5-year-old children learned how others used a novel word in either a direct-instruction or an overhearing context. Thereafter, they were presented with a protagonist who used the novel word to refer to either the same or another object. Children of both age groups selectively protested when the protagonist used the word to refer to another object, and older children selectively affirmed when the protagonist used the word to refer to the same object. Overall, the study is in line with theoretical notions that early language acquisition could be conceived of as the acquisition of a normative social practice.

The Risk of the Revelatory State.

Patients enter states that in their spontaneity and deep interiority have qualities of the revelatory. I propose we recognize such a state as a clinical event: The person is in a state of intense internal receiving of self. We might think of it as a state of internal communication happening as the person speaks. The person feels real to herself. Her relation to her mind in this revelatory moment is easily intruded on-even by ventures of play. When the state is gone, it is gone. I single out this clinical moment from moments that are cocreated and happening within an analytic third. I argue that in the revelatory moment, a patient builds capacities to be present for pain, desire-for raw experiences ordinarily difficult to access. The state makes a strict demand on the analyst. I see it as a moment of object usage-that is, it is a moment of risk with the analyst. This moment challenges and deepens our understanding of Winnicott's usage formulation.

Self-directed learning by preschoolers in a naturalistic overhearing context.

Three studies investigated preschoolers' self-directed learning ability in a naturalistic context: learning from overheard speech. In Experiment 1, 4.5- to 6-year-olds were exposed to 4 novel words and 6 arbitrary facts corresponding to a set of co-present toys; in Experiment 2, 3- to 4.5-year-olds heard 5 nouns and 3 facts. In the Pedagogical conditions, children were taught the information with the aid of multiple pedagogical cues, but in the Overhearing conditions, children had to 'listen in' to one side of a phone call to learn the information. Older preschoolers (Experiment 1) learned all items above chance in both conditions. Younger preschoolers (Experiment 2) learned words and facts above chance in the Pedagogical condition, but were at chance at learning words in the Overhearing condition, despite reliably learning facts from overhearing. Experiment 3 demonstrated that younger children's difficulty at learning new words from overhearing could not be explained by only being able to hear one side of the phone conversation, as they similarly struggled when the phone call took place over speakerphone. Measures of children's touch behavior suggest that older children were better able to coordinate their attention between the overheard speech and objects, though even younger children showed evidence of attention to the overheard speech. Together, our results demonstrate that by age 5, children can learn multiple new words and facts via overhearing. This self-directed learning ability depends on being able to coordinate attention between speech and the surrounding environment, a capacity that develops throughout preschool.