Categorical perception of nonspeech sounds by 2-month-old infants

Jusczyk, Peter W.; Rosner, B.; Cutting, James E.; Foard, Christopher F.; Smith, Linda B.

doi:10.3758/bf03199467

Cited by 81 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Since the results of experiments reported here demonstrate categorical perception for logarithmically arrayed plucked and bowed sounds, nearly the whole edifice is still in place. Only the results of Jusczyk et al (1977) still suffer from the inappropriateness of the original stimuli, and the possibility of finding categorical perception for these sounds in infants remains unfulfilled.…”

Section: A Reassessment Of the Import Of Plucks And Bowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plucks and bows are categorically perceived, sometimes

Cutting

1982

Perception & Psychophysics

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Cutting and Rosner (Perception & Psychophysics, 1974, 16, 564-570) reported that sawtooth wavetrains were perceived categorically when an array was varied in linear rise time increments. That is, rapid rise time stimuli were identified as plucked strings and slower rise time stimuli as bowed strings, and pluck-bow comparisons were relatively easy to discriminate but pluck-pluck and bow-bow comparisons were not. Such results indicate the general equivalence of identifica· tion and discrimination tasks. Rosen and Howell (Perception & Psychophysics, 1981, 30, 156-168), however, report that categorical perception does not occur for these sounds for two reasons. First, the original stimuli did not have the rise times reported by Cutting and Rosner. Second, the perception of these stimuli more closely follows a prediction from a Weber fraction. Acknowledging the first fact to be true, in part due to difficulties in digital·to-analog conver· sion, I set out to replicate and extend the results of Rosen and Howell. In Experiment I, I found that stimuli with equal linear increments of rise time are not perceived categorically; but they are not perceived to follow closely a logarithmic relation either. In Experiment 2, I found that stimuli with equal logarithmic increments of rise time were generally perceived categorically. Experiment 3 replicated the results of both experiments. Thus, plucked and bowed music-like sounds can sometimes be found to be perceived in a categorical manner. However, categorical perception is not found with stimuli generated in the manner of Cutting and Rosner (1974) or Rosen and Howell (1981), and the phenomenon generally seems subject to rather stringent, if not curious, stimulus conditions. Moreover, and more deeply, categorical perception seems hardly the bedrock phenomenon it once appeared to be, whether in speech or in any other domain.

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Section: A Reassessment Of the Import Of Plucks And Bowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plucks and bows are categorically perceived, sometimes

Cutting

1982

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Several lines of research have challenged the claim for a specialized mechanism for phonetic processing in young infants. The claim has been weakened by research showing that certain nonhumans also exhibit categorical discrimination (CD) for human speech sounds (Kluender, Diehl, & Killeen, 1987;Kuhl, 1981;Kuhl & Miller, 1975, 1978Kuhl & Padden, 1982Morse & Snowdon, 1975;Waters & Wilson, 1976) and by research demonstrating CD in infants for some nonspeech sounds (Jusczyk, Pisoni, Walley, & Murray, 1980;Jusczyk, Rosner, Cutting, Foard, & Smith, 1977). It has also been shown that both human infants and cotton-top tamarin monkeys can discriminate sentences from unfamiliar languages such as Dutch and Japanese when sentences are played forward but not backward (Ramus, Hauser, Miller, Morris, & Mehler, 2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

New Insights Into Old Puzzles From Infants' Categorical Discrimination of Soundless Phonetic Units

Baker

Golinkoff²,

Petitto

2006

Language Learning and Development

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For 4 decades, serious scientific debate has persisted as to whether infants' remarkable capacity to detect and categorize phonetic units is derived from language-specific mechanisms or whether this capacity develops out of general perceptual mechanisms. The heart of this controversy has revolved around whether the young human brain is specialized to detect the underlying contrasting patterns in language or whether it simply processes general auditory perceptual features of sound that, over time, become utilized for language learning. This article takes a novel look at this question by using soundless phonetic units from a natural signed language as a new research tool. Research finds that 4-month-old hearing infants categorize soundless phonetic units on the basis of linguistic category membership, whereas 14-month-old infants fail to do so-thereby exhibiting the identical initial capacity and classic developmental shift in infant categorical discrimination of native and nonnative (foreign language) phonetic units in speech. These results suggest a novel testable hypothesis: Infants may begin life with the capacity to detect specific patterned units with alternating contrasts unique to natural language organization and to categorize them on the basis of linguistic category membership.Out of the chaos of sights and sounds in our world, all infants discover the finite set of phonetic units that forms the basis of their specific native language by around 10 months of age. For 4 decades, heated scientific debate has centered on how infants come to have this remarkable capacity. Some have argued that this capacity reflects the neural superiority of the human brain to process specific properties of natural language, whereas others have argued that this capacity is built up from mechanisms of general perception. Here we take a new look at this decadesold puzzle by examining hearing, English-exposed infants' discrimination of nonnative (foreign language) phonetic units that are articulated on the hand in natural signed language. The use of soundless phonetic units allows us to pull apart whether infants have only discrimination for sound, or for language, be it from the mouth or on the hands. The use of two ages (4 and 14 months) that straddle the developmental time when nonnative contrasts in speech are first discriminated and then not discriminated gives us a window into whether the same developmental processes are at work when nonnative phonetic units are on the hands, as well as new insights into the universal nature of these processes in development.

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“…At first, this finding was construed as showing that humans are born with specific neural machinery devoted to speech. Subsequent investigations, however, demonstrated that basic acoustic processing capacities explain these early abilities that humans share with other organisms ( Jusczyk 1997, Jusczyk et al 1977, Kuhl & Miller 1975. Thus, though it is conceivable that humans are endowed with a species-specific disposition to acquire natural language, we lack the data that might answer whether we are born with cortical structures specifically dedicated to the processing of speech.…”

Section: Innate Dispositions For Language?mentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Therefore, in order to distinguish aptitudes that arise as part of our endowment from those that arise as a consequence of learning, it is useful to investigate very young infants and, whenever possible, neonates. Indeed, during the first months of life, infants acquire many language specific properties (see Werker & Tees 1984, Kuhl et al 1992, Mehler & Dupoux 1994, Jusczyk 1997.…”

Section: Innate Dispositions For Language?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some studies report that infants are born with speech processing abilities similar to those of experienced adults. For instance, infants discriminate all the phonetic contrasts that arise in natural languages ( Jusczyk 1997, Mehler & Dupoux 1994. At first, this finding was construed as showing that humans are born with specific neural machinery devoted to speech.…”

Section: Innate Dispositions For Language?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why is Language Unique to Humans?

Mehler

Nespor

Shukla

et al. 2006

Percept, Decision, Action: Bridging the Gaps

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Abstract. Cognitive neuroscience has focused on language acquisition as one of the main domains to test the respective roles of statistical vs. rule-like computation. Recent studies have uncovered that the brain of human neonates displays a typical signature in response to speech sounds even a few hours after birth. This suggests that neuroscience and linguistics converge on the view that, to a large extent, language acquisition arises due to our genetic endowment. Our research has also shown how statistical dependencies and the ability to draw structural generalizations are basic processes that interact intimately. First, we explore how the rhythmic properties of language bias word segmentation. Second, we demonstrate that natural speech categories play specific roles during language acquisition: some categories are optimally suited to compute statistical dependencies while other categories are optimally suited for the extraction of structural generalizations.

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Categorical perception of nonspeech sounds by 2-month-old infants

Cited by 81 publications

References 29 publications

Plucks and bows are categorically perceived, sometimes

Plucks and bows are categorically perceived, sometimes

New Insights Into Old Puzzles From Infants' Categorical Discrimination of Soundless Phonetic Units

Why is Language Unique to Humans?

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