Stop voicing perception in the societal and heritage language of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers: The role of age, input quantity and input diversity

Montanari, Simona; Steffman, Jeremy; Mayr, Robert

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101276

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Bilingual exposure (i.e., having a linguistically diverse input) was then assumed to create statistical distributions with increased variance and more overlap. Supporting this, children raised in a bilingual environment show what has been interpreted as disrupted or delayed speech perception [39][40][41][42] . This has canonically been seen as a marker of difficulties or delays in the development of this skill that likely derives from their more variable input.…”

Section: Early Development and Statistical Learningmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Bilingual studies of speech categorization typically adopt the same framing. Typically, bilinguals also showed a shallower slope than monolinguals (see Figure 1 for a representative plot); this was almost always interpreted as a deficiency or difficulty in categorization [40][41][42] . However, categorical perceptionwhich was originally developed to describe monolingual adult perception -is now widely seen to be an artifact of the discrimination tasks used to assess it [56][57][58][59] .…”

Section: The Precision Of Phonetic Categorizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Social Network Diversity Leads to More Flexible Speech Perception in School-aged Children

Kutlu,

Apfelbaum,

Sorensen

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Traditionally, there has been a strong emphasis on capturing linguistic diversity as noise. In speech perception, for instance, Categorical Perception (CP) is one example of such perspective. CP argues that listeners discard variation and only consider information that is necessary to identify the sound category itself. The theory led to the use of tasks that ask listeners to discard variability (i.e., use of binary response). These tasks were then used to assess language-diverse individuals’ language processes, and when compared to more homogenous groups, language-diverse individuals’ speech categorization was found to be noisy. Here, we tested linguistically diverse school-aged children’s speech categorization and found that increased linguistic diversity led to more flexible and gradient speech categorization. To understand diversity, we need to question the frameworks’ assumptions and the tools we employ. Unlike the previous arguments, when captured ecologically, linguistic diversity shows us the adaptive nature of human cognition.

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Section: Early Development and Statistical Learningmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: The Precision Of Phonetic Categorizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Network Diversity Leads to More Flexible Speech Perception in School-aged Children

Kutlu,

Apfelbaum,

Sorensen

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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English Vowel Perception in Spanish–English Bilingual Preschoolers: Multiple-Talker Input Is Only Beneficial for Children With High Language Exposure Levels

Montanari,

Steffman,

Mayr

2024

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purposes: This study examines English vowel perception in Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers, comparing bilinguals' perception patterns to those of monolinguals and examining how child internal (age) and external variables (input quantity and input diversity) predict perceptual performance. Method: Sixty children between 3;6 and 5;6 (years;months) of age participated in the study, 28 of whom were Spanish–English bilinguals and 32 English monolinguals. Perception was assessed through a forced-choice minimal-pair identification task in which children heard synthesized audio stimuli (i.e., “sheep” and “ship”) that varied systematically along the /i–ɪ/ continuum and were asked to match them with one of two pictures. The data were analyzed with Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression analyses, modeling responses as a function of continuum step, language background (monolingual or bilingual), age, English exposure (i.e., input quantity), and number of English input providers (i.e., input diversity). Results: The results indicate that, despite displaying nonnative English stop voicing perception in a previous study, the same bilingual children showed English /i–ɪ/ perception patterns that did not differ from those of monolinguals. While age did not predict vowel perception, input quantity and diversity jointly interacted to moderate how well children perceived the /i–ɪ/ contrast. Specifically, diverse input promoted perceptual performance in children who received high levels of English exposure—and who presumably had more advanced English language skills, whereas it limited perceptual performance in children with more limited English exposure and skills. Conclusions: This study shows that bilingual children can show monolingual-like perception patterns for some sounds while displaying nontarget perception for others. This is the first study to demonstrate that language exposure mediates the role of input diversity on speech sound development, suggesting that varied input can be more or less beneficial for speech sound development based on the learner's language learning stage.

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Stop voicing perception in the societal and heritage language of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers: The role of age, input quantity and input diversity

Cited by 2 publications

References 78 publications

Social Network Diversity Leads to More Flexible Speech Perception in School-aged Children

Social Network Diversity Leads to More Flexible Speech Perception in School-aged Children

English Vowel Perception in Spanish–English Bilingual Preschoolers: Multiple-Talker Input Is Only Beneficial for Children With High Language Exposure Levels

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