The development of phonetic perception in the first year of life

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that language-specific influences on speech perception begin early in life with attunement to different aspects of language structure emerging at different ages in the first year. With respect to segmental units, cross-language research has focused on the perception of syllables differing in a single consonant. This talk will focus on research investigating developmental patterns in cross-language vowel perception in the first year of life. A series of experiments exploring vowel perception in English-learning and German-learning infants as well as English-speaking and German-speaking adults will be presented. The results provide further insights into the emergence of language-specific influences and also reveal language-universal perceptual biases that infants bring to the task of vowel perception. Implications of these findings with respect to the early development of phonetic perception and vocal production will be addressed. [Work supported by NSERC.]