Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T07:00:47.960Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Perceptual strategies in prelingual speech segmentation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Jan V. Goodsitt ,
James L. Morgan  and
Patricia K. Kuhl
Jan V. Goodsitt
Affiliation:
University of Washington
James L. Morgan*
Affiliation:
Brown University
Patricia K. Kuhl
Affiliation:
University of Washington
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Box 1978, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Previous work has suggested that infants may segment continuous speech by a BRACKETING STRATEGY that segregates portions of the speech stream based on prosodic cues to their endpoints. The two present studies were designed to assess whether infants also can deploy a CLUSTERING STRATEGY that exploits asymmetries in transitional probabilities between successive elements, aggregating elements with high transitional probabilities and identifying points of low transitional probabilities as boundaries between units. These studies examined effects of the structure and redundancy of speech context on infants' discrimination of two target syllables using an operant head-turning procedure. After discrimination training on the target syllables in isolation, discrimination maintenance was tested when the target syllables were embedded in one of three contexts. Invariant Order contexts were structured to promote clustering, whereas the Redundant and Variable Order contexts were not. Thirty-six seven-month-olds were tested in Experiment I, in which stimuli were produced with varying intonation contours; 36 eight-month-olds were tested in Experiment 2, in which stimuli were produced with comparable flat pitch contours. In both experiments, performance of the three groups was equivalent in an initial 20-trial test. However, in a second 20-trial test, significant improvements in performance were shown by infants in the Invariant Order condition. No such gains were shown by infants in the other two conditions. These studies suggest that clustering may complement bracketing in infants' discovery of units of language.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 229 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

Study 1 formed part of a doctoral dissertation by the first author submitted to the University of Minnesota. This work was supported in part by a Dissertation Research Grant to J. Goodsitt from the University of Minnesota, NICHD Grant T32-HD07151 to the Center for Research in Learning, Perception, and Cognition, University of Minnesota, and NIH Grant 26521 and a MacArthur Foundation Grant to Patricia Kuhl. We thank Casey Haake and Robert Ling for assistance in developing computer software, and Caroline Abdala, James White and Karen Wolak for assistance in testing subjects. We also thank Jeanne Miller and two reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts.

References

REFERENCES

Aslin, R. N., Pisoni, D. B. & Jusczyk, P. W. (1983). Auditory development and speech perception in infancy. In Haith, M. M. & Campos, J. J. (eds), Handbook of child psychology: infancy and developmental psychology. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Bernstein Ratner, N. (1986). Durational cues which mark clause boundaries in mother-child speech. Phonetics 14, 303–9.Google Scholar
Bertoncini, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R., Blumstein, S. E. & Mehler, J. (1987). Discrimination in neonates of very short CVs. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 82, 31–7.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, W. E. & Paccia-Cooper, J. (1980). Syntax and speech. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, W. E. & Sorensen, J. M. (1981). Fundamental frequency in sentence production. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fee, J. & Ingram, D. (1982). Reduplication as a strategy of phonological development. Journal of Child Language 9, 41–54.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. (1977). Baby talk as a simplified register. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds), Talking to children. New York: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Fernald, A. (1985). Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to motherese. Infant Behavior and Development 8, 181–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A. & Kuhl, P. K. (1987). Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech. Infant Behavior and Development 10, 279–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L. R. & Wanner, E. (1982). Language learning: state of the art. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. R. (eds), Language acquisition: the state of the art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goodsitt, J. V., Morse, P. A., VerHoeve, J. N. & Cowan, N. (1984). Infant speech recognition in multisyllabic contexts. Child Development 55, 903–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayes, J. R. & Clark, H. H. (1970). Experiments on the segmentation of an artificial speech analogue. In Hayes, J. R. (ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Hirsch-Pasek, K., Kemler Nelson, D. G. Jusczyk, P. W., Cassidy, K. W., Druss, B. & Kennedy, L. (1987). Clauses are perceptual units for young infants. Cognition 26, 269–86.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W. (1989). Perception of cues to clausal units in native and non-native languages. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Copan, H. C. & Thompson, E. J. (1978). Perception by two-month-olds of glide contrasts in multisyllabic utterances. Perception and Psychophysics 24, 515–20.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W. & Thompson, E. (1978). Perception of a phonetic contrast in multisyllabic utterances by two-month-old infants. Perception and Psychophysics 23, 105–9.Google Scholar
Karzon, R. G. (1985). Discrimination of polysyllabic sequences by one - to four-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 39, 326–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karzon, R. G. & Nicholas, J. G. (1989). Syllabic pitch perception in two- to three-month-old infants. Perception and Psychophysics 45, 10–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemler Nelson, D. G. (1989). Developmental trends in infants' sensitivity to prosodic cues correlated with linguistic units. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City.Google Scholar
Kemler Nelson, D. G., Hirsch-Pasek, K., Jusczyk, P. W. & Wright Cassidy, K. (1989). How the prosodic cues in motherese might assist language learning. Journal of Child Language 16, 55–68.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (1985). Methods in the study of infant speech perception. In Gottlieb, G. & Krasnegor, N. (eds), Measurement of audition and vision in the first year of postnatal life: a methodological overview. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (1987). Perception of speech and sound in early infancy. In Salapatek, P. & Cohen, L. (eds), Handbook of infant perception. Vol. 2. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. M. (1936). Infant speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Dupoux, E. & Segui, J. (1990). Constraining models of lexical access: the onset of word recognition. In Altmann, G. (ed.), Cognitive models of speech processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J. & Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition 29, 143–78.Google Scholar
Morgan, J. L. (1986). From simple input to complex grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, J. L., Meier, R. P. & Newport, E. L. (1987). Structural packaging in the input to language learning: contributions of prosodic and morphological marking of phrases to the acquisition of language. Cognitive Psychology 19, 498–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newport, E. L., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. R. (1977). Mother, l'd rather do it myself: some effects and noneffects of maternal speech style. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Peters, A. M. (1983). The units of language acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Peters, A. M. (1985). Language segmentation: operating principles for the perception and analysis of language. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), Crosslinguistic studies of child language. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies in child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1972). Mothers' speech to children learning language. Child Development 43, 549–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trehub, S. (1973). Auditory linguistic sensitivity in infants. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McGill University.Google Scholar
Trehub, S. (1976). The discrimination of foreign speech contrasts by infants and adults. Child Development 47, 466–72.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. & McLeod, P. J. (1989). Infant preference for both male and female infantdirected talk: a developmental study of attentional and affective responsiveness. Canadian Journal of Psychology 43, 230–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, L. (1977). The perception of stop consonant voicing by Spanish—English bilinguals. Perception and Psychophysics 21, 289–97.Google Scholar
Wolff, J. G. (1977). The discovery of segments in natural language. British Journal of Psychology 68, 97–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, J. Z. & Aslin, R. N. (1990). Segmentation cues in maternal speech to infants. Presentation at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal.Google Scholar