Linking acoustic variability in the infants' input to their early word production

Abstract

Talker variability shapes how learning unfolds in the lab, and similar types of variability have been shown to be available to infants in the real world. Here, we ask whether talker variability also influences age of first production for common nouns, above and beyond the effects of frequency. Then, we ask whether these effects are redundant with effects of speech register. We predicted children's month of first production using acoustic measurements for highly common nouns from a longitudinal corpus of North-American infants. In addition of frequency, variability in how words sound in 6-17mo's input predicted when children said those same words. Further, while proportion of child-directed-speech also predicts month of first production, it does so alongside measurements of acoustic variability in children's real-world input. Together, this adds to a growing body of literature showing that how children hear words influences learning both in the lab and in daily life.