Mapping novel labels to actions: How the rhythm of words guides infants' learning

► We studied infants' ability to form associations between labels and paths of motion. ► We tested if English lexical stress would bias infants' associative learning. ► Verb- or noun-like stress labels were paired with an object performing path actions. ► Only infants in the verb-like stress condition learned the mapping. ► Sixteen-month-olds can use lexical stress to guide label-referent associations.