Scene and Heard: Spatial layout and language support young infants’ categorization of places

Human infants are limited in their self-guided navigation. Can they nevertheless learn about the places they’ll go? Across three experiments, we tested the role of spatial layout and language on pre-crawling 6-month-old infants’ (N = 96) ability to categorize places in a novelty-preference looking-time paradigm. We found that, when places are labeled, young infants are sensitive to their distinct spatial layouts and can learn place categories. When places’ spatial layouts are disrupted or when places are not labeled, by contrast, young infants cannot learn such place categories. Our results shed new light on young infants’ sensitivities to foundational domains of everyday life prior to their capacity for self-guided exploration.