English-learning one- to two-year-olds do not show a consonant bias in word learning

Abstract

Following the proposal that consonants are more involved than vowels in coding the lexicon (Nespor, Peña & Mehler, 2003), an early lexical consonant bias was found from age 1;2 in French but an equal sensitivity to consonants and vowels from 1;0 to 2;0 in English. As different tasks were used in French and English, we sought to clarify this ambiguity by using an interactive word-learning study similar to that used in French, with British-English-learning toddlers aged 1;4 and 1;11. Children were taught two CVC labels differing on either a consonant or vowel and tested on their pairing of a third object named with one of the previously taught labels, or part of them. In concert with previous research on British-English toddlers, our results provided no evidence of a general consonant bias. The language-specific mechanisms explaining the differential status for consonants and vowels in lexical development are discussed.

Spoken word recognition in early childhood: Comparative effects of vowel, consonant and lexical tone variation

“…Comparisons were drawn between each type of mispronunciation and correct pronunciations. Naming effects for vowels and consonants were also compared in light of recent debate on the relative influence of vowels and consonants on word recognition (Floccia et al, 2013;Havy & Nazzi, 2009;Mani & Plunkett, 2007;Nazzi, 2005;Nazzi et al, 2009). Naming effects for tone mispronunciations were significantly less than those for correct pronunciations.…”

“…Other studies have suggested that consonant and vowel substitutions influence word recognition in equal measure and that both types of segments are represented with equivalent strength in the developing lexicon (e.g. Floccia, Nazzi, Delle Luche, Poltrock, & Goslin, 2013;Mani & Plunkett, 2007). In the case of both vowels and consonants, sensitivity to mispronunciations appears to vary depending on the specific contrast used (Curtin, Fennell, & Escudero, 2009;Mani, Coleman, & Plunkett, 2008;, 2011Van der Feest, 2007;White & Morgan, 2008).…”

Two-year-olds interpret novel phonological neighbors as familiar words.

“…In some studies, somewhat younger children, as well as adults, have appeared to interpret or recall consonants and vowels differently (Creel, Aslin, & Tanenhaus, 2006; Cutler, Sebastian-Gallés, Soler-Vilageliu, & Van Ooijen, 2000; Hochmann, Benavides-Varela, Nespor, & Mehler, 2011; Nazzi, 2005; Nazzi, Floccia, Moquet, & Butler, 2009; Nazzi & New, 2007). In others, consonants and vowels are treated similarly (Floccia, Nazzi, Delle Luche, Poltrock, & Goslin, 2014; Mani & Plunkett, 2007; Swingley & Aslin, 2002). Some of the discrepancy among these results may be due to variation in the methods, whereas some variation is systematically linked to the child’s language (Højen & Nazzi, 2015).…”

Infants' First Words are not Phonetically Specified: Own Name Recognition in British English‐Learning 5‐Month‐Olds

“…() were searching for an early asymmetry in the processing of vowels and consonants, based on the proposal by Nespor, Peña, and Mehler () that these two phonological categories serve different functions in language processing (with consonants providing lexical information and vowels syntactic and prosodic information). While such an asymmetry was found in French‐learning infants (e.g., Havy & Nazzi, ; Nazzi, ), recent findings on young British English and Danish learners suggest that its development follows a language‐specific path (e.g., Floccia, Nazzi, Delle Luche, Poltrock, & Goslin, ; Højen & Nazzi, ; Mani & Plunkett, , ). Therefore, it was necessary to examine the behavior of English‐learning infants to provide a cross‐linguistic evaluation of the findings.…”

“…In addition, although the two languages have a comparable ratio of consonants versus vowels (e.g., Floccia et al., ), the vowel systems in French and English are also highly dissimilar. Delattre () summarized the differences between (American) English and French as follows: “Comparatively, English vowels are predominantly low, back, unrounded, with a strong tendency to center the short and unstressed […].…”