Perception of glides in multisyllabic utterances by infants

Abstract

Several aspects of the two‐month‐olds' perception of a phonetic contrast between glides in multisyllabic utterances were explored with the high amplitude sucking paradigm. First, do infants perceive contrasts between glides in the initial (e.g., YADA versus WADA) and medial positions (e.g., DAYA versus DAWA) of multisyllabic utterances? Second, are infants more likely to perceive these contrasts between stressed or unstressed syllables: Our results suggest the following: (1) two‐month olds are sensitive to place‐of‐articulation differences between glides in both the initial and medial positions of multisyllabic utterances; (2) positioning stress on the syllables to be discriminated had little or no effect on the infants' ability to perceive the contrast; and (3) there was no indication that infants were any more sensitive to the contrast in the initial position than in the medial position. Our findings were in complete agreement with those observed previously for infant's perception of stop consonant differences in multisyllabic utterances [Jusczyk and Thompson, Soc. Res. Child Dry. Abstr. (1977)], suggesting that infant's detection of medial contrasts does not depend on the presence of abrupt formant transitions.