Abstract
Fast phonetic learning in very young infants: what it shows, and what it doesn't show.
Highlights
One of the very solid findings from infant speech perception research is that infants start out as universal perceivers and that their perception becomes attuned to the ambient language(s) mostly during the second half of the first year of life
WBZ describe the bimodal distribution encountered by one infant group during the 12-min training as a “native contrast,” and the unimodal distribution encountered by the other infant group as a “non-native contrast.”
Both infant groups in the WBZ study are exposed to Dutch in which [ε-æ] is a non-native contrast; their language experience cannot be re-defined on the basis of a 12-min exposure to a set of isolated vowel stimuli from a restricted part of the vowel space
Summary
One of the very solid findings from infant speech perception research is that infants start out as universal perceivers and that their perception becomes attuned to the ambient language(s) mostly during the second half of the first year of life. Wanrooij et al (WBZ) examined the neural response of two groups of Dutchlearning 2-to 3-month-olds to non-native English vowels [ε] and [æ] after short exposure (12 min) to either a bimodal or a unimodal distribution of isolated steadystate vowels along an [ε-æ] continuum. WBZ conclude that short-term distributional learning impacts how young infants perceive speech sounds.
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