Boosting the input: 9-month-olds' sensitivity to low-frequency phonotactic patterns in novel wordforms

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Infants learn words by identifying word boundaries.
• Language-specific phonotactics, or sound patterns, are crucial cues for word segmentation.
• Previous studies show infants reject unfamiliar, low-frequency wordforms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if 9-month-old infants can utilize low-frequency phonotactic combinations for word segmentation.
• To determine if pre-exposure to specific sound patterns influences infants' ability to segment words.

Main Methods:

• A modified head-turn procedure was used to assess infant attention.
• Infants were pre-exposed to nonwords with either low-frequency complex onsets (e.g., 'dr-') or zero-frequency onsets (e.g., 'dl-').
• Following familiarization, infants were tested on their segmentation abilities with novel nonwords containing these onsets.

Main Results:

• Infants exposed to low-frequency onsets successfully segmented novel nonwords containing those onsets.
• Infants exposed to zero-frequency onsets did not show successful segmentation.
• This suggests experience with specific phonotactic patterns supports segmentation.

Conclusions:

• Nine-month-old infants demonstrate the capacity to learn and use low-frequency phonotactic cues for word segmentation.
• Early exposure to wordforms containing specific sound combinations enhances infants' ability to parse language.
• Phonotactic knowledge plays a significant role in early language acquisition and word learning.