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Young children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon.

Jeffry A Coady1, Richard N Aslin

  • 1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA. jacoady@wisc.edu

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|October 27, 2004
PubMed
Summary

Children can discern the frequency of speech sounds, improving with age. This sensitivity to phonotactic structure aids in developing language skills and understanding word formation.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Phonetics

Background:

  • Children's language acquisition relies on understanding speech sound patterns.
  • The role of statistical learning in acquiring phonotactic structure is crucial for early language development.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate children's sensitivity to phonotactic frequency in American English.
  • To examine how age influences the perception of phonetic segment and combination frequencies.
  • To explore the developmental trajectory of sensitivity to acoustic-phonetic information.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments utilized a nonword repetition task with children aged 2.5 and 3.5 years.
  • Children repeated nonwords varying in phonotactic frequency (individual segments and diphones).

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  • Statistical analyses controlled for articulatory ease and lexical factors.

    • Main Results:

    • Both age groups repeated high-frequency nonwords more accurately than low-frequency ones, indicating phoneme frequency sensitivity.
    • Sensitivity to individual phonetic segments increased with age.
    • Older children demonstrated sensitivity to diphone frequency, unlike younger children.

    Conclusions:

    • Young children possess sensitivity to detailed acoustic-phonetic information in their developing lexicon.
    • Sensitivity to the sound structure of language, including phonotactic patterns, develops progressively throughout childhood.
    • Findings inform our understanding of the acoustic basis of lexical representations in both developing and mature language systems.