Lexical influences on children's perception of foreign‐accented speech.

Abstract

The ability to perceive speech accurately in the face of multiple sources of variability appears to develop during early and middle childhood. However, the cognitive‐linguistic skills that underlie these improvements are unknown. Early‐middle childhood is a time of rapid development in many areas of cognition and language, including the expansion of the lexicon. Lexical development includes both changes in lexicon size and changes in lexicon structure. Research suggests that as the lexicon grows, the words within the lexicon become more highly specified moving from more holistic representations to more fine‐grained, segmental representations. This study tested how the expansion and restructuring of the lexicon are related to the ability to perceive highly variable speech signals. Specifically, the perception of foreign‐accented speech — a common, real‐world source of speech variability — was tested. The relationship between lexicon size and the perception of lexically easy (i.e., high‐frequency words from sparse neighborhoods) and lexically hard (i.e., low‐frequency words from dense neighborhoods) foreign‐accented words was investigated for 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children. [Work supported by NIDCD 1R21DC010021.]