Rapid acquisition of phonological alternations by infants

White, Katherine S.; Peperkamp, Sharon; Kirk, Cecilia; Morgan, James L.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.11.012

Cited by 50 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Control condition Previous work suggests that 12-month-olds can learn novel phonological alternations based on distributional evidence after brief exposure to an artificial language (K. White et al, 2008). The current results provide corroborating evidence for this conclusion because infants differentiated the Alternating and Contrastive trials in the BIAS condition.…”

Section: Bias Conditionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Following K. White et al (2008), the test words were presented without na or rom, removing the conditioning context for the alternation. Because infants could not rely on Therefore, buni/vuni should be treated as variants of the same word, whereas dilu/zilu should be treated as two separate words.…”

Section: Design and Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike K. White et al (2008), we then tested infants on novel pairs of sounds that were more similar (BIAS condition) or less similar (CONTROL condition) than the alternating sounds heard during exposure. If infants have a bias to prefer alternations between similar sounds, then we expected generalization from dissimilar to similar sounds (BIAS condition), but not from similar to dissimilar sounds (CONTROL condition).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using a modified version of K. White et al's (2008) design, we exposed infants to alternations involving either pairs of dissimilar sounds (BIAS condition) or pairs of similar sounds (CONTROL condition). Unlike K. White et al (2008), we then tested infants on novel pairs of sounds that were more similar (BIAS condition) or less similar (CONTROL condition) than the alternating sounds heard during exposure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Biased generalization of newly learned phonological alternations by 12-month-old infants

White

Sundara

2014

Cognition

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Previous work has suggested that learners are sensitive to phonetic similarity when learning phonological patterns (e.g., Steriade, 2001Steriade, /2008White, 2014). We tested 12-month-old infants to see if their willingness to generalize newly learned phonological alternations depended on the phonetic similarity of the sounds involved. Infants were exposed to words in an artificial language whose distributions provided evidence for a phonological alternation between two relatively dissimilar sounds ([p ~ v]

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Section: Bias Conditionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Design and Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Biased generalization of newly learned phonological alternations by 12-month-old infants

White

Sundara

2014

Cognition

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“…Two of them investigated effects of phonotactic learning on sensitivity to a sound contrast, such that infants come to be less sensitive to a pair of sounds when they are in complementary distribution than when they can occur in the same phonological positions (K. S. White, Peperkamp, Kirk, & Morgan, 2008;J. White, 2014).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic answer

Cristià

2018

Cognition

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Two of the key tasks facing the language-learning infant lie at the level of phonology: establishing which sounds are contrastive in the native inventory, and determining what their possible syllabic positions and permissible combinations (phonotactics) are. In 2002-2003, two theoretical proposals, one bearing on how infants can learn sounds (Maye, Werker, & Gerken, 2002) and the other on phonotactics (K. E. Chambers, Onishi, & Fisher, 2003), were put forward on the pages of Cognition, each supported by two laboratory experiments, wherein a group of infants was briefly exposed to a set of pseudo-words, and plausible phonological generalizations were tested in a subsequent phase. These two papers have received considerable attention from the general scientific community, and inspired a flurry of follow-up work. In the context of questions regarding the replicability of psychological science, the present work uses a meta-analytic approach to appraise extant empirical evidence for infant phonological learning in the laboratory. It is found that neither seminal finding (on learning sounds and learning phonotactics) holds up when close methodological replications are integrated, although less close methodological replications do provide some evidence in favor of the sound learning strand of work. Implications for authors and readers of this literature are drawn out. It would be desirable that additional mechanisms for phonological learning be explored, and that future infant laboratory work should employ paradigms that rely on constrained and unambiguous links between experimental exposure and measured infant behavior.

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Impacts ofacoustic‐phoneticvariability on perceptual development for spoken language: A review

Quam

Creel

2021

WIRES Cognitive Science

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This article reviews research on when acoustic‐phonetic variability facilitates, inhibits, or does not impact perceptual development for spoken language, to illuminate mechanisms by which variability aids learning of language sound patterns. We first summarize structures and sources of variability. We next present proposed mechanisms to account for how and why variability impacts learning. Finally, we review effects of variability in the domains of speech‐sound category and pattern learning; word‐form recognition and word learning; and accent processing. Variability can be helpful, harmful, or neutral depending on the learner's age and learning objective. Irrelevant variability can facilitate children's learning, particularly for early learning of words and phonotactic rules. For speech‐sound change detection and word‐form recognition, children seem either unaffected or impaired by irrelevant variability. At the same time, inclusion of variability in training can aid generalization. Variability between accents may slow learning—but with the longer‐term benefits of improved comprehension of multiple accents. By highlighting accent as a form of acoustic‐phonetic variability and considering impacts of dialect prestige on children's learning, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of how exposure to multiple accents impacts language development and may have implications for literacy development. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Language Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics

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Rapid acquisition of phonological alternations by infants

Cited by 50 publications

References 51 publications

Biased generalization of newly learned phonological alternations by 12-month-old infants

Biased generalization of newly learned phonological alternations by 12-month-old infants

Can infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic answer

Impacts ofacoustic‐phoneticvariability on perceptual development for spoken language: A review

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