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Related Experiment Videos

A statistical basis for speech sound discrimination.

Jennifer L Anderson1, James L Morgan, Katherine S White

  • 1Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. janderso@microsoft.com

Language and Speech
|January 30, 2004
PubMed
Summary
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Infant language acquisition shows that learning native language phonology causes loss of non-native speech sound discrimination. Input frequency influences which speech sound categories infants learn first.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental linguistics
  • Auditory perception in infants
  • Phonological development

Background:

  • Infants under six months can distinguish native and non-native consonant sounds.
  • This ability diminishes as infants learn their native language's phonological system.
  • Phonemic category formation is linked to this decline in discrimination ability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of input statistics in acquiring native language phonemic categories.
  • To test the hypothesis that relative frequency determines the order of category acquisition.

Main Methods:

  • Conditioned Head Turn Procedure used with English-learning infants (6.5 and 8.5 months).
  • Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts was assessed.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Adult control group tested using an AX task.

    • Main Results:

    • Older infants (8.5 months) performed worse on the more frequent coronal stop contrast compared to the less frequent dorsal stop contrast.
    • Younger infants (6.5 months) discriminated both contrasts equally well.
    • Adults also discriminated both contrasts equally.

    Conclusions:

    • Results preliminarily confirm that frequency is crucial in tuning phonological systems to native language properties.
    • A simple attractor model can explain the loss of discrimination for non-native contrasts.
    • Measuring graded loss of contrasts alongside input frequencies offers a powerful method for assessing infants' phonological representations.