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Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts (1994)
| Venue: | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance |
| Citations: | 152 - 13 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Polka94developmentalchanges,
author = {Linda Polka and Janet F. Werker},
title = {Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts},
journal = {Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance},
year = {1994},
pages = {421--435}
}
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Abstract
Discrimination of 2 German vowel contrasts was examined in English-learning infants of 6-8 and 10-12 months of age using a head turn procedure. The younger infants were better able than the older infants to discriminate the nonnative contrasts, but performance at 6-8 months was below levels that have been reported for nonnative consonant contrasts. A 2nd experiment using a habituation looking procedure showed that 4-month-old infants discriminated both German vowel contrasts, but the 6-month-olds could not. The findings are consistent with previous consonant work, revealing a shift from a language-general toward a language-specific pattern during the 1st year of life. However, that shift begins earlier in development for vowels than for consonants. There is a substantial body of research on developmental differences in discrimination of nonnative phonetic con-trasts, but the research to date has focused almost exclu-sively on the perception of consonants. In the present study, we investigated developmental changes across infancy in discrimination of nonnative vowel contrasts. The existing cross-language research suggests that an
Keyphrases
developmental change nonnative vowel contrast german vowel contrast english-learning infant present study 6-8 month head turn procedure cross-language research 4-month-old infant 10-12 month developmental difference language-specific pattern nonnative contrast previous consonant work nonnative consonant contrast substantial body nonnative phonetic con-trasts
