Figure 17 - uploaded by Derek M Houston
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Discrimination of synthetic speech sounds was studied in 1- and 4-month-old infants. The speech sounds varied along an acoustic dimension previously shown to cue phonemic distinctions among the voiced and voiceless stop consonants in adults. Discriminability was measured by an increase in conditioned response rate to a second speech sound after hab...
Similar publications
Purpose:
The authors investigated the effects of acoustic cues (i.e., pitch height, pitch contour, and pitch onset and offset) and phonetic context cues (i.e., syllable onsets and rimes) on lexical tone perception in Cantonese-speaking children.
Method:
Eight minimum pairs of tonal contrasts were presented in either an identical phonetic context...
Previous studies have shown that the number of vowels present in one's L1 inventory may affect the ability to learn and discriminate non-native vowel contrasts. Specifically, learners whose L1 contains fewer vowels compared to the target language may find many non-native vowel contrasts novel and have discrimination performance lower than learners...
In this study, we investigated automatic laughter seg-mentation in meetings. We first performed laughter-speech discrimination experiments with traditional spectral features and subsequently used acoustic-phonetic features. In segmentation, we used Gaus-sian Mixture Models that were trained with spec-tral features. For the evaluation of the laughte...
This paper examines the identifiability and discriminability of speech sounds in a neutralized position. As in other languages, it is reported that Russian word-final devoicing in Russian is shown to be incomplete in production. In order to examine the perceptual status between incompletely neutralized sounds, both identification and discrimination...
Mandarin Chinese speech sounds (vowels × tones) were presented to younger and older Chinese-native speakers with normal hearing. For the identification of vowel-plus-tone, vowel-only, and tone-only, younger listeners significantly outperformed older listeners. The tone 3 identification scores correlated significantly with the age of older listeners...
Citations
... Regarding infant speech discrimination, there is contradictory evidence on young infants' ability to discriminate consonant contrasts (Eimas et al., 1971;Eimas, 1974;Lasky et al., 1975;Eimas and Miller, 1980) and vowels (Trehub, 1973;Swoboda et al., 1976;Kuhl, 1983). Recent evidence may favor the proposition that infants come pre-wired with auditory processing skills that are modified selectively by experience in the languagelearning environment (Houston, 2016). Findings on word segmentation suggest that well before infants are able to produce words, by 8 months of age, they are able to segment words from fluent speech (Jusczyk and Aslin, 1995). ...
The present study investigates the way infants express their emotions in relation to parental feelings between maternal and paternal questions and direct requests. We therefore compared interpersonal engagement accompanying parental questions and direct requests between infant–mother and infant–father interactions. We video-recorded spontaneous communication between 11 infant–mother and 11 infant–father dyads—from the 2nd to the 6th month—in their home. The main results of this study are summarized as follows: (a) there are similarities in the way preverbal infants use their affections in spontaneous interactions with their mothers and fathers to express signs of sensitivity in sharing knowledge through questions and direct requests; and (b) the developmental trajectories of face-to-face emotional coordination in the course of parental questions descend in a similar way for both parents across the age range of this study. Regarding the developmental trajectories of emotional non-coordination, there is evidence of a linear trend in terms of age difference between the parents’ gender with fathers showing the steeper slope. The results are discussed in relation to the theory of intersubjectivity.
... Este modo particular de escucha implica una " sintonización " del aparato auditivo humano con las características acústicas particulares de la señal del habla, que permite la extracción y comprensión de información a partir del procesamiento de la señal . En consecuencia, el estudio de la percepción temprana del habla se interesa en el desarrollo de esa sintonización durante los primeros años de vida (Gierut & Pisoni, 1988; Houston, 2011). Este tipo particular de estudio, que surgió a comienzos de la década de 1970, pretende encontrar respuestas a preguntas relacionadas con el desarrollo perceptual y cognitivo de la facultad del lenguaje en los primeros años de vida, tales como, cuál es rol de la experiencia lingüística en la percepción del habla, cuál es la relación entre el desarrollo de la producción y la percepción del lenguaje, y cómo se relaciona el habla con otras habilidades cognitivas (Gerken & Aslin, 2005). ...
... Con respecto a lo anterior, el lector debe advertir que los avances en el campo de estudio de la percepción temprana del habla durante los últimos 30 años han sido fuertemente influenciados por la obra de Noam Chomsky. Por consiguiente, el abordaje ha sido sobre todo de corte cognitivo y las conclusiones se suelen generar en términos de estados y procesos mentales, poniendo particular cuidado en identificar las habilidades perceptivas que se sospechan innatas y universales (Houston, 2011; Levelt, 2013; Weitzman, 2007). Desde luego, la aproximación teórica innatista y universalista no es actualmente el único marco de estudio de la adquisición y percepción del habla. ...
El estudio de la percepción temprana del habla surgió a comienzos de la década de los setenta, pero solo se desarrolló plenamente diez años después, debido a la aparición y adaptación de nuevos métodos empíricos y herramientas tec - nológicas. En este artículo se presenta una revi - sión de los métodos experimentales que pueden ser utilizados para el estudio de la percepción del habla en niños menores de un año. También se refieren algunas de las conclusiones teóricas más relevantes que se han alcanzado gracias a su aplicación. Se pretende brindar un panorama del estado metodológico y teórico del estudio de la percepción del lenguaje hablado durante el pri - mer año de vida.
... Several studies have demonstrated that rhythmic differences of the mothers' languages allow newborn infants to distinguish languages (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 2001; Mehler, Jusczyk, Lambertz, Halsted, Bertoncini & Amiel-Tison, 1988; Nazzi, Bertoncini & Mehler, 1998; Nazzi, Jusczyk & Johnson, 2000). This ability is attributed to the knowledge of native language prosody already gained in utero in the third trimester (Houston, 2011). If even newborns are sensitive to linguistic rhythmic patterns, it is reasonable to expect that rhythmic differences can be observed in young children, although the exact patterns in production still remain unclear, particularly given the large gulf between perceptual sensitivity to rhythm and children's ability to express rhythmic differences in production. ...
Previous studies have showed that at age 3;0, monolingual children acquiring rhythmically different languages display distinct rhythmic patterns while the speech rhythm patterns of the languages of bilingual children are more similar. It is unclear whether the same observations can be found for younger children, at 2;6. This study compared five Cantonese–English simultaneous bilingual children with five monolingual children in each language using both rhythmic metrics and qualitative data on syllable structure complexity and lexical stress. Results show that while the speech rhythms of monolingual children are different at 2;6, the rhythmic patterns of bilingual children are less distinct.
... The youngest infants are attracted to speech before exhibiting sensitivity to linguistic structure. 39 Indeed, an infant's attention to the linguistic properties of speech rests on a developmentally prior perceptual facility to organize the sensory effects of utterances. This necessarily precedes mastery of the native language, whether the coarse grain of prosody or the fine grain of phonotactics is concerned. ...
Classic research on the perception of speech sought to identify minimal acoustic correlates of each consonant and vowel. In explaining perception, this view designated momentary components of an acoustic spectrum as cues to the recognition of elementary phonemes. This conceptualization of speech perception is untenable given the findings of phonetic sensitivity to modulation independent of the acoustic and auditory form of the carrier. The empirical key is provided by studies of the perceptual organization of speech, a low‐level integrative function that finds and follows the sensory effects of speech amid concurrent events. These projects have shown that the perceptual organization of speech is keyed to modulation; fast; unlearned; nonsymbolic; indifferent to short‐term auditory properties; and organization requires attention. The ineluctably multisensory nature of speech perception also imposes conditions that distinguish language among cognitive systems. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:213–223. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1213
This article is categorized under: Psychology > Language
... One type of experience that affects language development is auditory experience. For most children, access to auditory information begins before birth, and there is some evidence that such prenatal exposure affects speech perception development (see Houston, 2011, for a review). Being able to hear the sounds of the ambient language plays an important role in shaping infants' speech perception throughout the first year of life, putting them in position to learn the words and grammar of their language or languages throughout the rest of their development. ...
Word‐learning skills were tested in normal‐hearing 12‐ to 40‐month‐olds and in deaf 22‐ to 40‐month‐olds 12 to 18 months after cochlear implantation. Using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP), children were tested for their ability to learn two novel‐word/novel‐object pairings. Normal‐hearing children demonstrated learning on this task at approximately 18 months of age and older. For deaf children, performance on this task was significantly correlated with early auditory experience: Children whose cochlear implants were switched on by 14 months of age or who had relatively more hearing before implantation demonstrated learning in this task, but later implanted profoundly deaf children did not. Performance on this task also correlated with later measures of vocabulary size. Taken together, these findings suggest that early auditory experience facilitates word learning and that the IPLP may be useful for identifying children who may be at high risk for poor vocabulary development.
A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/buEmjBLy5kc .
... Developmental studies showed that CP is predisposed to voicing [3]. CP changes in the first year of life and is adapted to the phonemic oppositions present in the native language [4], [5]. ...
Cochlear implant (CI) improves hearing but communication abilities still depend on several factors. The present study assesses the development of voicing categorization in deaf children with cochlear implant, examining both categorical perception (CP) and boundary precision (BP) performances. We compared 22 implanted children to 55 normal-hearing children using different age factors. The results showed that the development of voicing perception in CI children is fairly similar to that in normal-hearing controls with the same auditory experience and irrespective of differences in the age of implantation (two vs. three years of age).
... The progression from a language-general to a language-specific pattern of speech discrimination has been described for both consonants and vowels. With respect to consonants, investigators have found that younger infants are able to discriminate a wide variety of consonant contrasts, both native and nonnative (Eimas, Siqueland et al. 1971; Holmberg, Morgan et al. 1977; Aslin, Pisoni et al. 1983; Bertoncini, Bijeljac-Babic et al. 1987). However, infants' sensitivities to nonnative consonant differences begin to decline around 10-12 months of age (Werker and Tees 1983; Werker and Tees 1984; Werker and Lalonde 1988; Best 1993; Best, McRoberts et al. 1995). ...
To understand speech, infants must differentiate between phonetic changes that are linguistically contrastive and those that are not. Research has shown that infants are very sensitive to fine-grained differences in speech sounds that differentiate words in their own or another language. However, little is known about infants' ability to discriminate phonetic differences associated with different dialects of their native language. Using a visual habituation procedure, 7-, 11-, 18-, 24-, and 30-month olds were tested on their ability to discriminate two linguistically equivalent variants of the diphthong (aI)-one produced in their native dialect (North Midland American English) versus one produced in a non-native dialect (Southern American English). Seven-month olds discriminated the variants but 11-month olds did not. Infants from 18-30 months of age did not demonstrate statistically significant discrimination, but they did show a trend toward discrimination with increasing age. The findings suggest that dialect discrimination follows a U-shaped course of development. Because 11-month olds demonstrated the poorest dialect discrimination performance, we are currently assessing their ability to discriminate linguistically different speech sounds varying in degree of acoustic similarity. Preliminary findings suggest that both language experience and acoustic differences may influence infants' discrimination of phonetic contrasts in the native language. [Work supported by NIH-NIDCD Grant (R01DC006235), an IUPUI Educational Enhancement Grant, and grants from the IUPUI UROP and SROP Programs.].
... The voiced/unvoiced distinction has not been much studied in babbling even though this distinction is present in a very important majority of the world's languages. Studies (Eimas, 1971) led on this coordination focus on the perception of the VOT (Voice Onset Time) defined as the time interval between the beginning of the periodic glottal pulses and the release of the supra-glottal occlusion (Lisker & Abramson, 1964). This study shows that 1 month old children perceive a difference between 20 ms of VOT, at the adults' category boundary. ...
All babies in the world utter their first words around the age of 12 months, i.e. first productions identified by the parents as lexical items of their mother tongue. Studies have shown that the nature of the segmental inventory is governed by biomechanical constraints bearing on the developing supra-glottal motor system. The features that make a first word are then to be looked for in the prosodic shape of the word: laryngeal and rhythmic control, and in what we called "closance" control: the control of pressures inside the vocal tract. We are examining these developing features on the basis of longitudinal audio-visual recordings of a French child from the age of 6 to 15 months.
... Just to mention the second one, the existence of a ''natural'' boundary between unvoiced and voiced plosives has received support from VOT (Voice Onset Time) categorical experiments. These experiments involved either animals (Kuhl and Miller, 1978) or prelingual infants (Eimas et al., 1971). Both experiments displayed categorical perception with increased discrimination around the boundary between voiced and unvoiced plosives, though language was not (for animals) or not yet (for infants) present. ...
... The best know instance is the perception of speech sounds, where this peculiar behavior is present as early as 2 weeks of age (Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk, & Vigorito, 1971). The fact that the same physical stimuli are treated categorically when the listener is cued into believing that they are speech sounds, and in the more conventional psychophysical fashion when they are instead construed as noises (cf Jusczyk, 1986) clearly supports the view that speech perception is mediated by domain-specific mechanisms. ...
It is argued that tacit knowledge concerning the characteristic properties and constraints of bodily movements is taken into account by the process that turns sensory inputs relative to dynamical events perceptual representations. First, an concise overview of the classical literature is presented for the purpose of demonstrating the connection between the theme of the chapter and some older ideas. The experimental support to the notion of motor-perceptual interaction is presented in the main body of the chapter which reviews recent experimental studies in visual perception and visuomotor coordination. The final section addresses a number of conceptual issues and offers a functional framework for representing motor-perceptual interactions.
