Acoustic characterization of the question–statement contrast in 4, 7 and 11 year-old children

Patel, Rupal; Grigos, Maria I.

doi:10.1016/j.specom.2006.06.007

Cited by 44 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…¶ For cases like pitch and duration variation, the problem to be solved is not about ignoring variation, but assigning it the correct linguistic function. English vowel duration, for example, is used in signaling linguistic stress (6, 7), and assigning prosodic structure (8)(9)(10), speech features children must learn to understand and produce (11)(12)(13).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months

Dietrich

Swingley

Werker

2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

133

110

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One of the first steps infants take in learning their native language is to discover its set of speech-sound categories. This early development is shown when infants begin to lose the ability to differentiate some of the speech sounds their language does not use, while retaining or improving discrimination of language-relevant sounds. However, this aspect of early phonological tuning is not sufficient for language learning. Children must also discover which of the phonetic cues that are used in their language serve to signal lexical distinctions. Phonetic variation that is readily discriminable to all children may indicate two different words in one language but only one word in another. Here, we provide evidence that the language background of 1.5-year-olds affects their interpretation of phonetic variation in word learning, and we show that young children interpret salient phonetic variation in language-specific ways. Three experiments with a total of 104 children compared Dutch-and English-learning 18-month-olds' responses to novel words varying in vowel duration or vowel quality. Dutch learners interpreted vowel duration as lexically contrastive, but English learners did not, in keeping with properties of Dutch and English. Both groups performed equivalently when differentiating words varying in vowel quality. Thus, at one and a half years, children's phonological knowledge already guides their interpretation of salient phonetic variation. We argue that early phonological learning is not just a matter of maintaining the ability to distinguish language-relevant phonetic cues. Learning also requires phonological interpretation at appropriate levels of linguistic analysis.language acquisition ͉ lexical development ͉ phonology ͉ word learning I nfants begin to acquire their native language by learning phonetic categories (1, 2). At birth, infants seem to distinguish most of the phonetic contrasts used by the world's languages. However, over the first year, this ''universal'' capacity shifts to a language-specific pattern in which infants retain or improve categorization of native-language sounds but fail to discriminate many nonnative sounds. Children's failure to discriminate nonnative sound contrasts is actually advantageous for learning language, because it prevents children from misinterpreting within-category phonetic variation as indicating a linguistic distinction.However, whereas infants' phonetic category learning is of clear relevance to language acquisition, discrimination failure is not the only mechanism that is required for developing a native-language phonology that can correctly categorize words (3-5). Many phonetic properties of speech remain discriminable to infants even when the native language does not use these properties to distinguish words. For example, pitch variation is a salient phonetic property of speech but is not used systematically in English for marking different words (in contrast to ''tone'' languages, like Mandarin, in which syllables comprising the same phonetic segments have...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months

Dietrich

Swingley

Werker

2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

133

110

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“…These results are consistent with Ludwig et al 's (2014) findings that significant improvements in interaural and dichotic discrimination thresholds for acoustic parameters such as intensity, frequency, and signal duration occur between 6-7 and 8-9 years. Similarly, development effects on prosodic control have been reported based on acoustic analysis of prosody production and articulatory movement studies in children [1][2][3]34].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…It is important to know how children understand different prosodic functions during communication at different ages and the degree of variability that might be expected within an age group. Relative to the studies examining production of prosodic contrasts [1][2][3][4], less is known about the perception of prosodic functions in children. Prosody is reported as a neglected field of research when compared to other aspects of language [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Patel and Grigos [3] investigated agerelated development in the use of different combinations of acoustic cues (F0, intensity, and duration) to mark question-statement contrast in 4, 7, and 11 year old children. They reported that 4 year olds were unable to reliably use rising F0 contour to signal questions instead used increased final syllable duration, while a combination of F0, intensity, and duration cues were used by 7 year olds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prosody Perception in Typically Developing School-aged Children

Kalathottukaren¹,

Purdy²

2017

J Phonet and Audiol

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Purpose: To report normative data for prosody perception abilities in typically developing school-aged children.Method: Four receptive prosody subtests of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) and the Child Paralanguage subtest of Diagnostic Analysis of Non Verbal Accuracy 2 (DANVA 2) were administered to 45 children divided into three age groups, with mean ages 7.84, 10.13, and 11.90 years. Results:Overall results indicated significant age-related improvements in performance on PEPS-C Chunking and Contrastive Stress Reception subtests. Accuracy for emotion recognition differed significantly across the two levels of emotion intensity for the DANVA 2. High emotion intensity items yielded better accuracy compared to low intensity items. A confusion matrix for the DANVA 2 showed that errors were not randomly distributed; some pairs of emotions were confused with one another more often than others. The lowest perceptual accuracy was observed for fear and sadness. Conclusions:Normative data for prosody perception abilities in typically developing school aged children were reported using PEPS-C receptive prosody subtests and DANVA 2 Child Paralanguage subtest. The development of receptive prosodic skills mostly occurs between 7 and 9 years. Findings of this study have clinical implications for assessing prosody perception in atypical populations.

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“…Children as young as five years can imitate the production of the question/statement contrast (Loeb & Allen, 1993), while the rising contour associated with questions being harder to produce (Patel & Grigos, 2006;Snow, 1998). Patel and Grigos (2006) found that children aged 4, 7, and 11 produced different combinations of prosodic cues to distinguish between statements and questions.…”

Section: Prosodic Development and Syntax The Following Review Outlinmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of prosodic skills in reading comprehension

Whalley¹

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Acoustic characterization of the question–statement contrast in 4, 7 and 11 year-old children

Cited by 44 publications

References 35 publications

Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months

Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months

Prosody Perception in Typically Developing School-aged Children

The Role of prosodic skills in reading comprehension

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