Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination

by: Jessica Maye, Janet F Werker, Louann Gerken

Cognition, Vol. 82, No. 3. (January 2002), pp. B101-B111.

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Abstract

For nearly two decades it has been known that infants' perception of speech sounds is affected by native language input during the first year of life. However, definitive evidence of a mechanism to explain these developmental changes in speech perception has remained elusive. The present study provides the first evidence for such a mechanism, showing that the statistical distribution of phonetic variation in the speech signal influences whether 6- and 8-month-old infants discriminate a pair of speech sounds. We familiarized infants with speech sounds from a phonetic continuum, exhibiting either a bimodal or unimodal frequency distribution. During the test phase, only infants in the bimodal condition discriminated tokens from the endpoints of the continuum. These results demonstrate that infants are sensitive to the statistical distribution of speech sounds in the input language, and that this sensitivity influences speech perception.

@article{citeulike:668453, abstract = {For nearly two decades it has been known that infants' perception of speech sounds is affected by native language input during the first year of life. However, definitive evidence of a mechanism to explain these developmental changes in speech perception has remained elusive. The present study provides the first evidence for such a mechanism, showing that the statistical distribution of phonetic variation in the speech signal influences whether 6- and 8-month-old infants discriminate a pair of speech sounds. We familiarized infants with speech sounds from a phonetic continuum, exhibiting either a bimodal or unimodal frequency distribution. During the test phase, only infants in the bimodal condition discriminated tokens from the endpoints of the continuum. These results demonstrate that infants are sensitive to the statistical distribution of speech sounds in the input language, and that this sensitivity influences speech perception.}, author = {Maye, Jessica and Werker, Janet F. and Gerken, Louann }, citeulike-article-id = {668453}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00157-3}, journal = {Cognition}, keywords = {speech-perception}, month = {January}, number = {3}, pages = {B101--B111}, posted-at = {2006-05-24 15:38:27}, priority = {0}, title = {Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00157-3}, volume = {82}, year = {2002} }

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TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:668453 L3 - citeulike-article-id:668453 TI - Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination JF - Cognition VL - 82 IS - 3 SP - B101 EP - B111 N2 - For nearly two decades it has been known that infants' perception of speech sounds is affected by native language input during the first year of life. However, definitive evidence of a mechanism to explain these developmental changes in speech perception has remained elusive. The present study provides the first evidence for such a mechanism, showing that the statistical distribution of phonetic variation in the speech signal influences whether 6- and 8-month-old infants discriminate a pair of speech sounds. We familiarized infants with speech sounds from a phonetic continuum, exhibiting either a bimodal or unimodal frequency distribution. During the test phase, only infants in the bimodal condition discriminated tokens from the endpoints of the continuum. These results demonstrate that infants are sensitive to the statistical distribution of speech sounds in the input language, and that this sensitivity influences speech perception. KW - speech-perception AU - Maye, Jessica AU - Werker, Janet AU - Gerken, Louann PY - 2002/01// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00157-3 ER -

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