Perceptual beginnings to language acquisition

Werker, Janet F.

doi:10.1017/s0142716418000152

Cited by 115 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 155 publications

(197 reference statements)

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“…Poltrock and Nazzi (2015) proposed that instead of a strict division between the acoustic‐phonetic and lexical hypotheses, both may play a role in consonant bias emergence (see also Nazzi et al, 2016). Development of speech perception and word learning skills occur at the same time and likely influence one another (Werker, 2018). Infants must first have some knowledge that consonants and vowels are distinct phonological categories and different from one another, which likely would emerge from their acoustic‐phonetic properties.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own‐name recognition

Holzen

Nazzi

2020

Infancy

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Recent evidence suggests that during the first year of life, a preference for consonant information during lexical processing (consonant bias) emerges, at least for some languages like French. Our study investigated the factors involved in this emergence as well as the developmental consequences for variation in consonant bias emergence. In a series of experiments, we measured 5‐, 8‐, and 11‐month‐old French‐learning infants orientation times to a consonant or vowel mispronunciation of their own name, which is one of the few word forms familiar to infants at this young age. Both 5‐ and 8‐month‐olds oriented longer to vowel mispronunciations, but 11‐month‐olds showed a different pattern, initially orienting longer to consonant mispronunciations. We interpret these results as further evidence of an initial vowel bias, with consonant bias emergence by 11 months. Neither acoustic‐phonetic nor lexical factors predicted preferences in 8‐ and 11‐month‐olds. Finally, counter to our predictions, a vowel bias at the time of test for 11‐month‐olds was related to later productive vocabulary outcomes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own‐name recognition

Holzen

Nazzi

2020

Infancy

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“…Milestones and developmental stages have long been identified in various developmental domains (e.g., walking: Thelen and Smith, 1994;perception: e.g. Best, 1994;Maye et al, 2002;Werker, 2018; spoken language: e.g., Kuhl, 2011; language processing: e.g., Vilain et al, 2019) and provide researchers with referential landmarks for a better understanding of typical trajectories, as well as useful tools for the diagnosis and prediction of potential deviations from typical pathways. In the domain of spoken language development, canonical babbling stands as an undisputed milestone allowing children to move toward a more complex quality of the speech production skill (e.g., production of the first meaningful words).…”

Section: Nonlinear Interactions Between Vocabulary Phonological Awarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration

et al. 2019

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The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis) ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children's production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children's coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children's vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children's phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed.

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“…And indeed, toddlers (Bernhardt, Kemp, & Werker, ; Werker, Fennell, Corcoran, & Stager, ; also see Kemp et al, , for more mixed results)—including bilingual‐learning toddlers (Fennell, Byers‐Heinlein, & Werker, )—who are better able to use native phonological categories to drive word learning are more advanced on many measures of later language development. Increasingly, researchers are beginning to also consider the extent to which a budding vocabulary drives speech perception development (e.g., see Swingley, ; Werker, in press); thus, the process may be bidirectional.…”

Section: Long‐term Consequences Of Early Linguistic Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cascading and Multisensory Influences on Speech Perception Development

Choi

Black

Werker

2018

Mind Brain and Education

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Over the first weeks and months following birth, infants' initial, broad‐based perceptual sensitivities become honed to the characteristics of their native language. In this article, we review this process of emerging specialization within the context of a cascading “critical period” (CP) framework, in which periods of maximal openness to experience of different aspects of language occur at sequential, overlapping points in development. Importantly, as infants' experience of speech is not limited to auditory signals, but is informed by—for example—their experience of talking faces and their own oral motor movements, we review the trajectory of perceptual specialization in multisensory language processing. Throughout, we highlight the impact of increasing perceptual specialization on later language outcomes (e.g., word learning, foundations of syntax, literacy), and consider how the outcomes can be compromised if/when the timing of perceptual specialization has been perturbed.

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Perceptual beginnings to language acquisition

Cited by 115 publications

References 155 publications

Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own‐name recognition

Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own‐name recognition

Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration

Cascading and Multisensory Influences on Speech Perception Development

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