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Among the earliest and most frequent words that infants hear are their names. Yet little is known about when infants begin to recognize their own names. Using a modified version of the head-turn preference procedure, we tested whether 4.5-month-olds preferred to listen to their own names over foils that were either matched or mismatched for stress pattern. Our findings provide the first evidence that even these young infants recognize the sound patterns of their own names. Infants demonstrated significant preferences for their own names compared with foils that shared the same stress patterns, as well as foils with opposite patterns. The results indicate when infants begin to recognize sound patterns of items frequently uttered in the infants' environments.
Mandel et al. (Fri,) studied this question.