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In a double-blind, randomized controlled trial, we investigated relationships between infants' exposure to thiamine and their language-processing ability. Three hundred thirty-five lactating Cambodian mothers of 161 female/174 male infants received either 0, 1.2, 2.4, or 10 mg of thiamine daily, from 2 to 24 weeks postpartum. We assessed infants' language processing at 24 weeks via the infant-directed speech (IDS) task, measuring attentional enhancement to IDS versus adult-directed speech. Maternal thiamine supplementation displayed a small but statistically significant dose-response relationship to the magnitude of infants' IDS-elicited attentional enhancement (adjusted R ² = 0.022, p = .011). As well, only infants whose mothers received a daily thiamine supplement of 10 mg showed fully robust IDS-related attentional enhancement. These findings showcase the IDS Task for monitoring the integrity of infants' language processing and underscore the importance of adequate thiamine early in life for ensuring optimal language development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

When parents label novel parts of familiar objects, they typically provide familiar whole-object terms before offering novel part terms (e.g., "See this cup? This is the rim."). Such whole-part juxtaposition might help children to accurately interpret the meaning of novel part terms, but it can do so only if they recognize the conjunction as a potential cue to part meaning. Two studies examined (a) whether 3- to 4-year-olds use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms and (b) how they might do so. Study 1 confirmed that children indeed use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms. Furthermore, 2 control conditions clarified that children's use of juxtaposition was not simply due to memory effects, such as the facilitation of lexical access, nor to recognition of the grammatical frame that typically accompanies juxtaposition. Study 2 revealed that children readily use juxtaposition in a novel, gestural format. Such flexibility in recognizing and utilizing novel variants of juxtaposition strongly suggests that pragmatic understanding lies at the heart of children's sensitivity to whole-part juxtaposition.