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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 10, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Cross-talker lexical tone discrimination in infancy.

Ye Feng¹, René Kager², Regine Lai³

¹School of Linguistics and Language Resources, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China.

Journal of Child Language

|April 22, 2025

Summary

Infants learning Cantonese tones show a U-shaped development in perceiving speech across different talkers. Task demands influence 18-month-olds' ability to distinguish lexical tones, highlighting perceptual asymmetry.

Keywords:

infancy lexical tone discrimination talker variability

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Last Updated: May 10, 2025

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Published on: January 23, 2017

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

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Published on: July 1, 2015

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Linguistics
Auditory Perception

Background:

Infants must learn to perceive speech despite variations in talker characteristics.
Lexical tone perception is crucial for tonal languages like Cantonese.
Understanding developmental changes in cross-talker variability perception is key.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate developmental changes in infants' perception of native lexical tones across different talkers.
To examine the influence of task demands on lexical tone discrimination in infants.
To identify potential U-shaped developmental trajectories in cross-talker variability perception.

Main Methods:

Habituation-based visual fixation procedures were used to test Cantonese-learning infants.
Infants were exposed to Cantonese Tone 1 and Tone 3 produced by single or multiple talkers.
Age groups tested included 12, 18, and 24-month-olds, with varying task demands.

Main Results:

12- and 24-month-olds discriminated tones across talkers, but 18-month-olds did not.
18-month-olds could discriminate tones across talkers when a novel object referent was present.
A U-shaped developmental pattern and perceptual asymmetry were observed in cross-talker tone discrimination.

Conclusions:

Infant lexical tone perception across talkers follows a U-shaped developmental path.
Task demands and referential context significantly impact 18-month-olds' cross-talker tone discrimination.
Perceptual asymmetry exists in the development of native lexical tone discrimination across talkers.