Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants

Höhle, Barbara; Bijeljac‐Babic, Ranka; Herold, Birgit; Weißenborn, Jürgen; Nazzi, Thierry

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2009.03.004

Cited by 196 publications

(216 citation statements)

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“…In the context of infants development of the perception of prosodic contrasts generally, our findings place the perception of broad and narrow focus prosody along a similar path to that found for stress-based contrasts (Jusczyk et al, 1993;Höhle et al, 2009;Skoruppa et al, 2009;Skoruppa et al, 2011;Skoruppa et al, 2013), and unlike that of lexical pitch accent and lexical tone (Mattock & Burnham, 2006;Mattock et al, 2008;Sato et al, 2009;Yeung et al, 2013), as well as intonation contrasts based on pitch height and pitch direction . These results suggest that infants' abilities to perceive a prosodic contrast are dependent on the types of acoustic cues that define the contrast.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

“…a single token with contrasting prosodic realizations) are found for the broad/narrow focus distinction, similarly to findings for stress (Friederici, Friedrich, & Christophe, 2007;Höhle et al, 2009;Skoruppa et al, 2013), whereas results for lexical pitch accent or intonation contrasts based on pitch height/direction show that early discrimination abilities are not hindered by phonetic variability (Nazzi, Floccia & Bertoncini, 1998;Sato et al, 2009;Frota et al, 2014). In order to ascertain how stimuli complexity affects early perceptual abilities, further research is required with intonation contrasts, and also lexical pitch.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

“…Most studies of infants' perception of prosodic categories have used variants of the head-turn preference procedure (Mattock & Burnham, 2006, for lexical tone; Höhle et al, 2009 for stress), in some cases with visual and auditory presentation (Skoruppa et al, 2009(Skoruppa et al, , 2013, for stress), or some version of the visual fixation/habituation paradigm (Sato et al, 2009, for lexical pitch accent; Soderstrom et al, 2011Yeung et al, 2013, for lexical tone).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Infants’ Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus

Butler

Vigário

Frota

2015

Language Learning and Development

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Infants perceive intonation contrasts early in development, in contrast with lexical stress but similarly to lexical pitch accent. Previous studies have mostly focused on pitch height/direction contrasts, however, languages use a variety of pitch features to signal meaning, including differences in pitch timing. In this study, we investigate infants' perception of the prosodic contrast that cues the difference between all-new information (broad focus) and the highlighting of a particular word (narrow/contrastive focus) in European Portuguese (EP), and which has been described as having pitch timing as its key feature. Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm, EP learning infants discriminated this contrast at 12 months, but not at 7 months, deviating from previous findings of a precocious ability to perceive pitch distinctions. These results suggest different developmental trajectories of the perception of different prosodic contrasts, underlining the importance of the nature of the cues signalling a given contrast in a given language.(Word count -154)

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Infants’ Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus

Butler

Vigário

Frota

2015

Language Learning and Development

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“…As the experimental results of Jusczyk, Houston, and Newsome (1999) revealed more than a decade ago, American babies of 7.5 months showed an exquisite sensitivity to the predominant trochaic stress pattern in English called as trochaic bias. However, a decade later, results of a cross-linguistic study (Höhle, Bijeljac-Babic, Herold, Weissenborn, & Nazzi, 2009) revealed an earlier emergence of this bias in German infants as compared to French ones. The first electrophysiological studies on infants' automatic detection of trochaic pattern revealed discriminative abilities below the age of 6 months as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Ragó

Honbolygó

Róna

et al. 2014

Research in Developmental Disabilities

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Infants born prematurely are at higher risk for later linguistic deficits present in delayed or atypical processing of phonetic and prosodic information. In order to be able to specify the nature of this atypical development, it is important to investigate the role of early experience in language perception. According to the concept of Gonzalez-Gomez and Nazzi (2012) there is a special intrauterine sensitivity to the prosodic features of languages that should have a special role in language acquisition. Therefore, we may also assume that pre-and full-term infants having months difference in intrauterine experience show different maturation patterns of processing prosodic and phonetic information present at word level. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of these differences on word stress pattern vs. phoneme information processing. Two age groups of infants (6 and 10 month-olds) were included in our study. 21 of 46 of the total of infants investigated were prematurely born with low birth weight. We used the mismatch negativity (MMN) event related brain potential (ERP) component, a widely used electrophysiological correlate of acoustic change detection, for testing the assumed developmental changes of phoneme and word stress discrimination. In a passive oddball paradigm we used a word as standard, a pseudoword as phoneme deviant, and an illegally uttered word as stress deviant. Our results showed no differences in MMN responses in the phoneme deviant condition between the groups, meaning a relatively intact maturation of phoneme processing of preterm infants as compared to their contemporaries. However, the mismatch responses measured in the stress condition revealed significant betweengroup differences. These results strengthen the view that the total length of intrauterine experience influences the time of emergence of prosodic processing.

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“…Experimental studies have shown that newborn infants detect prosodic cues in language (Sambeth, Ruohio, Alku et al, 2008), discriminate between familiar and novel voices (Kisilevsky, Hains, Lee et al, 2003), attend to and produce intonation and rhythmic characteristics of the ambient language (Hohle, Bijeljac-Babic, Herold et al, 2009;Mampe, Friederici, Christophe et al, 2009). …”

Section: Speech Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Sound : Computer-assisted reading intervention with a phonics approach for deaf and hard of hearing children using cochlear implants or hearing aids

Mentzer¹

2014

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In the present thesis, computer-assisted reading intervention with a phonics approach was examined in deaf and hard of hearing children (DHH) aged 5, 6 or 7 years old using cochlear implants, hearing aids or a combination of both. Children with normal hearing (NH), matched for non-verbal intelligence and age, served as a reference group. Deaf and hard of hearing children constitute a heterogenetic population regarding cognitive and academic achievement. Many of them do not reach age appropriate levels in language and reading ability during their school years, with negative consequences for later training facilities and job opportunities. Finding relevant intervention methods to promote early language learning and literacy development that are easy to implement is therefore of great importance. In this thesis three aspects of cognitive ability (phonological processing skills, lexical access and working memory capacity), and reading ability was examined at three points in time; baseline 1, pre intervention and post intervention. Additionally, computer-assisted training delivered by means of the Internet in the children’s homes was explored in order to determine whether it would be a useful and efficient method for the DHH population. Overall, the results from the present thesis support the notion that offering a computer-assisted intervention program delivered at home, is an alternative way to support not only NH children with reading difficulties but also to support DHH children’s phonological development and decoding proficiency.I denna avhandling undersöktes fonologisk lästräning vid datorn för döva och hörselskadade barn 5, 6 och 7 år gamla som använde cochleaimplantat, hörapparat eller en kombination av båda. Barn med normal hörsel som var matchade avseende icke-verbal intelligens och ålder utgjorde jämförelsegrupp. Döva och hörselskadade barn utgör en heterogen grupp avseende kognitiv förmåga och skolframgång. Många av dem når inte kraven för åldern avseende språk och läsförmåga under skoltiden vilket får negativa konsekvenser för senare utbildning och arbete. Att hitta relevanta interventionsmetoder för att främja tidig språkinlärning och läsutveckling som är lätta att genomföra, är därför av stor betydelse. I avhandlingen undersöktes tre aspekter av kognitiv förmåga (fonologisk bearbetningsförmåga, lexikal åtkomst och arbetsminneskapacitet) och läsförmåga vid tre tidpunkter; förtest 1, före intervention och efter intervention. Dessutom undersöktes om datorbaserad intervention som genomförs via Internet i hemmet, skulle vara en användbar och effektiv metod för döva och hörselskadade barn. Resultaten i stort visar att fonologisk lästräning vid datorn i barnens hem är en alternativ metod att stödja inte bara barn i risk att utveckla lässvårigheter, utan även döva och hörselskadade barns fonologi och avkodningsförmåga

show abstract

Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants

Cited by 196 publications

References 50 publications

Infants’ Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus

Infants’ Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Rethinking Sound : Computer-assisted reading intervention with a phonics approach for deaf and hard of hearing children using cochlear implants or hearing aids

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