134 GOGATE AND BAHRICK related; for instance, if convention permitted, a 'ball' could just as easily be called a bat. Lexical learning entails the detection of arbitrary but conventional relations between labels and specific objects and events in the environment. The ability to detect arbitrary label-object (event) relations is, therefore, an important precursor to lexical comprehension. How do infants detect these relations? What are the conditions that facilitate learning of the relations between a spoken word and its referent? The present study addressed these questions by presenting 7-month-olds with simple verbal labels (the vowels, Ial and Ii/) paired with objects under different conditions.