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Perception of the stop/glide contrast in infancy
D K Oller1, R E Eilers, R Burns
1University of Miami, Coral Gables, Fla.
Phonetica
|January 1, 1993
Summary
Infants performed worse than adults on the stop-glide speech contrast in a new study. This challenges the idea that babies perceive all speech sounds, suggesting developmental changes in speech perception.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Auditory Perception
Background:
- Existing research suggests infants possess broad speech sound discrimination abilities.
- It's often theorized that language acquisition involves inhibiting perception of non-native speech contrasts.
- Some studies indicate infants outperform adults on non-native speech sound discrimination.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate infant and adult perception of the stop-glide speech contrast.
- To compare infant performance with adult performance using a consistent methodology.
- To challenge the prevailing view of universal infant speech perception capabilities.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a vigilance paradigm adapted for both infant and adult participants.
- Focused on the discrimination of the stop-glide speech contrast.
- Included stimuli with varying vowel durations (long vs. short).
Main Results:
- Infants demonstrated poorer performance on the stop-glide contrast compared to adults.
- Adults' perception patterns differed significantly from infants', especially concerning vowel duration.
- Findings contradict previous studies suggesting superior infant discrimination abilities.
Conclusions:
- The prevalent view of infants' innate, universal speech perception may be an oversimplification.
- Infant speech perception is not uniformly superior to adult perception across all contrasts and conditions.
- Experimental paradigms and stimulus parameters critically influence outcomes in infant speech perception research, necessitating further investigation.