Looking for the edge: emerging segmentation abilities in atypical development

Early Word Segmentation Behind the Mask

“…In addition, the magnitude of the absolute difference in looking time between edge and unfamiliar was larger than between medial and unfamiliar. In line with previous word segmentation studies (Johnson et al, 2014 ; Butler and Frota, 2018 ; Frota et al, 2020 ), these findings suggest an advantage of the edge position over the medial position, which is consistent with the emergence of word segmentation at the utterance edge first, and was only found in the Audiovisual experiment. This set of findings, specific to the Audiovisual experiment, adds to previous suggestions that audiovisual information might provide support to infant speech segmentation (de la Cruz-Pavía et al, 2019 ; Tan and Burnham, 2019 ).…”

“…The results showed a trend whereby the infants that looked more to target words at utterance-edge position than to unfamiliar words [ r (32) = 0.33, p = 0.058] and that looked more at target words at utterance-medial position than to unfamiliar words [ r (32) = 0.33, p = 0.052] have larger later expressive vocabulary outcomes measured with the CDI percentile. This finding is in line with previous studies by indicating that emerging segmentation abilities are signaled by more looks to familiar target words at edge position and medial position than to unfamiliar words (Butler and Frota, 2018 ; Frota et al, 2020 ) and by showing a positive relation between better performance at the segmentation task and later vocabulary development.…”

“…The relation between the infants' performance in the segmentation experiments and their later expressive vocabulary outcomes was also inspected. Interestingly, those infants that are already showing the excepted segmentation pattern, with more looks to familiar target words than to unfamiliar target words (Butler and Frota, 2018 ; Frota et al, 2020 ), are the ones exhibiting larger expressive vocabularies in line with previous work, showing that word segmentation abilities support vocabulary development (Newman et al, 2006 ; Singh et al, 2012 ). Thus, although no evidence for word segmentation was found in the current study, the patterns of emerging segmentation abilities and their relation to later language outcomes suggest that word segmentation abilities, albeit delayed in the infants from the current study, are developing, following a similar path to that found in earlier studies.…”

“…These findings are in line with two suggestions from previous studies. On the one hand, they confirm the advantage of utterance-edge position, a prosodically prominent position, over utterance-medial position in the development of early word segmentation abilities (Johnson et al, 2014 ; Butler and Frota, 2018 ; Frota et al, 2020 ). On the other hand, they support the idea that audiovisual speech cues might facilitate infant speech segmentation (de la Cruz-Pavía et al, 2019 ; Tan and Burnham, 2019 ).…”

“…Segmenting linguistic units from the continuous speech stream is a precursor to infants' ability to identify word-like forms in speech and to match them to their referents, i.e., word learning (Bergmann and Cristia, 2016 ). In addition, word segmentation has been shown to support the development of syntax (e.g., Singh et al, 2012 ) and predict concurrent and later language development (Singh et al, 2012 ; Frota et al, 2020 ). Thus, word segmentation is a crucial milestone for infants' language development, and any alteration might reflect on later development.…”