Abstract
The prevailing view is that newborn phonetic perception is tabula rasa because of poor transmission of the acoustic features of phonemes to the fetus. However, vowel information may be at least intermittently clear in utero. We tested 80 neonates (M = 32.8 h old, range 7–75) in the US and Sweden with English and Swedish vowels using an infant-controlled sucking procedure. Sucking activated 1 of 17 stimuli (a prototype and 16 variants) from the same vowel category, either the English /i/ or the Swedish /y/. Infants sampled through all 17 stimuli, presented randomly, one time. The dependent measure was mean number of sucks per stimulus. Results showed that the Foreign Vowel Group had significantly greater means to the prototype than the Native Group. A within-group analysis showed another Foreign-Native Group difference. Infants in the Foreign Group had significantly more sucks to the prototype compared to the variants, whereas the Native Group treated the prototype and variants equivalently. These results require us to re-evaluate assumptions about availability of speech sounds to the fetus and the state of speech perception at birth.
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