Onsets and codas in 1.5-year-olds' word recognition

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Speech Perception

Background:

• Previous research on toddlers' phonological knowledge focused on syllable onsets, not word-final consonants (codas).
• Hypothesized that children's coda knowledge might be less developed than onset knowledge due to production limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate 14- to 21-month-old children's phonological knowledge of familiar words, specifically their comprehension of word-final consonants.
• To compare children's speech processing with adults' using a visual fixation task.

Main Methods:

• A visual fixation task was used to measure comprehension of correctly pronounced and mispronounced words.
• Mispronunciations involved substitutions in onset or coda consonants.
• Eye movements of toddlers and adults were analyzed for timing and accuracy.

Main Results:

• Both children and adults fixated targets more for correct pronunciations than mispronunciations, regardless of consonant position (onset vs. coda).
• Analysis of eye movement timing revealed incremental speech signal interpretation in both age groups.
• Children's responses were slower and less accurate, but temporal processing patterns mirrored adults'.

Conclusions:

• Toddlers demonstrate accurate encoding of consonants, including word-final ones, even for words they cannot yet produce.
• Phonological knowledge acquisition in early childhood is more robust than previously assumed.
• Evidence supports the incremental processing of speech signals from an early age.