Discrimination of auditory target dimensions in the presence or absence of variation in a second dimension by infants

Kuhl, Patricia K.; Miller, James D.

doi:10.3758/bf03202536

Cited by 92 publications

(79 citation statements)

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“…Third, discrimination performance does not suffer significantly when tokens from multiple talkers are used as opposed to when only tokens from a single talker are used. Hence, like Kuhl and Miller's (1982) finding that irrelevant pitch variation did not significantly interfere with infants' ability to detect a pitch change, the present study found no evidence that talker variability interferes with infants' detection of a phonetic contrast. However, this is not to say that the infants' processing of speech is unaffected by talker variability.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

“…The two groups did not differ significantly with respect to this measure, t(22) = 0.29. Next, we sought to determine whether a difference between infants in the single and multiple-talker conditions might show up in the time to habituation measure used by Kuhl and Miller' (1982). We collapsed across the three groups in both the single-and multiple-talker conditions since the treatment in each of the groups was similar for the preshift period.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Morse (1978) later suggested that manipulations of the preshift-postshift interval duration could provide a way of assessing memory effects in the HAS paradigm. In addition, discussions of the role that memory may play in discrimination performance have been raised in conjunction with studies that have used varied stimulus sets in place of a single stimulus during the habituation phase of the HAS procedure (e.g., Bertoncini et al, 1988;Jusczyk & Derrah, 1987;Kuhl & Miller, 1982;Miller & Eimas, 1979). Nevertheless, until very recently direct attempts to manipulate memory factors in the HAS procedure have not been reported.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to modifying the traditional HAS procedure by presenting a randomized set of sounds as in the previous experiment (see also Bertoncini et al, 1988;Jusczyk & Derrah, 1987;Kuhl & Miller, 1982), we also introduced another modification first employed by Jusczyk, Kennedy, and Jusczyk (in preparation). Specifically, a 2-min delay period filled with a slide presentation is introduced between the habituation and postshift phases of the HAS procedure.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, aside from the two studies by Kuhl (1979Kuhl ( , 1983, the only attempt to focus on the way that infants handle irrelevant variation in speech sounds was a study by Kuhl and Miller (1982) with infants 1-4 months of age. Kuhl and Miller used synthetic vowel stimuli and examined the capacity of infants to detect a change in one dimension when a second dimension varied irrelevantly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

1992

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The present study explores how stimulus variability in speech production influences the 2-monthold infant's perception and memory for speech sounds. Experiment 1 focuses on the consequences of talker variability for the infant's ability to detect differences between speech sounds. When tested with high-amplitude sucking (HAS) procedure, infants who listened to versions of a syllable, such as /b∧g/, produced by 6 male and 6 female talkers, detected a change to another syllable, such as /d∧g/, uttered by the same group of talkers. In fact, infants exposed to multiple talkers performed as well as other infants who heard utterances produced by only a single talker. Moreover, other results showed that infants discriminate the voices of the individual talkers, although discriminating one mixed group of talkers (3 males and 3 females) from another is too difficult for them. Experiment 2 explored the consequences of talker variability on infants' memory for speech sounds. The HAS procedure was modified by introducing a 2-min delay period between the familiarization and test phases of the experiment. Talker variability impeded infants' encoding of speech sounds. Infants who heard versions of the same syllable produced by 12 different talkers did not detect a change to a new syllable produced by the same talkers after the delay period. However, infants who heard the same syllable produced by a single talker were able to detect the phonetic change after the delay. Finally, although infants who heard productions from a single talker retained information about the phonetic structure of the syllable during the delay, they apparently did not retain information about the identity of the talker. Experiment 3 reduced the range of variability across talkers and investigated whether variability interferes with retention of all speech information. Although reducing the range of variability did not lead to retention of phonetic details, infants did recognize a change in the gender of the talkers' voices (from male to female or vice versa) after a 2-min delay. Two additional experiments explored the consequences of limiting the variability to a single talker. In Experiment 4, with an immediate testing procedure, infants exposed to 12 different tokens of one syllable produced by the same talker discriminated

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

1992

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Neonatal perception of the rhythmical structure of speech: the role of stress patterns

Sansavini

1997

Early Dev. Parent.

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This paper approaches the problem of newborns' segmentation of speech into units, taking into account the language-specificity of phonological units and prosodic elements. Current hypotheses are discussed and a rhythmical hypothesis is proposed according to which newborns have a predisposition to pay attention to the rhythm of speech. At the words' level, they would perceive the rhythm of words, as characterized by the binary and ternary alternations of stressed±unstressed syllables/vowels (stress patterns) and, in some languages, by the alternation of rising± falling pitches (pitch patterns). Empirical evidence in favour of this hypothesis is provided. The methodology used to study infants' speech perception is also considered. Furthermore, a discussion is opened about the processing of stress patterns and vowels in words and about the development in the use of the mother tongue's stress patterns for speech segmentation, phonetic discrimination and foreign language discrimination. '1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: newborns; rhythm; stress; vowels; speech perception and segmentation; high amplitude sucking procedure A central question in the study of language acquisition is how infants start to retrieve units from continuous speech. To acquire the lexicon and the syntax of the language it is necessary first to identify units in speech, i.e., clauses, phrases, words. Pauses often separate clauses, but less regularly phrases and words. Therefore, speech segmentation is not a trivial task particularly for very young infants who, at least until the end of the first year of life, cannot use semantic and syntactic cues to retrieve speech units . This paper discusses first the state of the art about theories on infant segmentation of speech. Then, it presents evidence in favour of a hypothesis according to which speech segmentation starts by processing the prosody of speech and discusses also the methodology inherent to studies on infants' speech perception. Finally, it makes some proposals for further research on the use and development of mother-tongue stress patterns.

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Speech Perception

Jusczyk

Luce

2002

Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology

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The scientific study of the perception of spoken language has been a productive area of research for over fifty years. During this period, we have learned much about infants' and adults' remarkable capacities for perceiving and understanding the sounds of their language. We present a selective review of the past half century of research on speech perception, focusing on three principle topics: early work on the discrimination and categorization of speech sounds, more recent efforts to understand the processes and representations responsible for spoken word recognition, and research on how infants acquire the capacity to perceive their native language. Our intent is to provide the reader with a sense of the progress our field has made over the last half century in understanding the human's extraordinary capacity for the perception of spoken language.

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Discrimination of auditory target dimensions in the presence or absence of variation in a second dimension by infants

Cited by 92 publications

References 23 publications

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

Neonatal perception of the rhythmical structure of speech: the role of stress patterns

Speech Perception

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