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Developmental Changes in Infants' Ability to Cope with Dialect Variation in Word Recognition.
Rachel Schmale1, Alejandrina Cristià2, Amanda Seidl3
1Department of Psychology North Park University.
Summary
Twelve-month-old infants can recognize words despite dialectal accent variations. This developmental milestone aids in processing ambient language and supports vocabulary growth, unlike 9-month-olds.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Linguistics
- Speech perception
Background:
- Infants' word representations shift from specific to abstract by their first year.
- This abstraction helps manage non-essential variations like voice and affect.
- Accommodating dialectal accent variation is crucial for language acquisition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate developmental changes in infants' word recognition in continuous speech.
- To assess infants' ability to handle dialectal accent variation.
Main Methods:
- Familiarizing 9- and 12-month-old infants with words from a specific dialect (North Midland-American English or Southern Ontario Canadian English).
- Testing word recognition using passages spoken by a speaker of the opposite dialect.
- Measuring infants' ability to recognize words amidst dialectal differences.
Main Results:
- Twelve-month-olds demonstrated the ability to recognize words despite dialectal accent differences.
- Nine-month-olds did not readily recognize words when presented with a different dialect.
Conclusions:
- By 12 months, infants develop the capacity to generalize word recognition across dialectal variations.
- This developmental progression is vital for efficient language processing and vocabulary acquisition in diverse linguistic environments.
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