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The final sample included 25 Hebrew-speaking infants aged 12 and 18 months. Infants completed three experimental phases: (a) a 2-part validation phase: (1) recognition of a familiar object (ball) among two items (ball, bottle) upon hearing its label (e.g., \u201cWhere is the ball?\u201d), and (2) exposure to an interlocutor gazing at and talking to an unfamiliar object (rattle) without labeling it (e.g., \u201cLook, it is here\u201d); (b) a learning phase, in which two unfamiliar animal dolls of similar visual salience were presented, and the interlocutor labeled one doll (e.g., \u201cLook, here is b\u00edcket\u201d); and (c) a test phase, in which the four objects (ball, rattle, and the two animal dolls) were shown together, and infants were tested to see if they look at the target object upon hearing the learned label (e.g., \u201cWhere is b\u00edcket?\u201d) but not upon hearing a novel label. Eighteen-month-olds followed the interlocutor\u2019s gaze more often and attended longer to the labeled object during learning compared with 12-month-olds. In the test phase, both age groups showed word recognition, looking longer at the target object after hearing its label than at familiar or unlabeled distractors, although differences with the visually similar distractor were nonsignificant. When hearing the non-learned word, infants looked longer at the similar distractor. Infants demonstrated word\u2013object learning based on the interlocutor\u2019s gaze, with gaze -following abilities strengthening with age.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/00238309251395278","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,3]],"date-time":"2026-01-03T05:17:19Z","timestamp":1767417439000},"page":"234-255","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Word Learning Through Eye-Gaze Cues at Ages 12 and 18 Months"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"69","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6277-0997","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Osnat","family":"Segal","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Communication Disorders, Steyer School of Health Professions, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Israel"},{"name":"Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel-Aviv University, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zipora","family":"Yegudayev","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Communication Disorders, Steyer School of Health Professions, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_4_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Abney D. 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