The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: A Japanese-English cross-linguistic study

Yoshida, Katherine A.; Iversen, John R.; Patel, Aniruddh D.; Mazuka, Reiko; Nito, Hiromi; Gervain, Judit; Werker, Janet F.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.01.005

Cited by 107 publications

(142 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…This explanation is similar to the one offered by Yoshida et al (2010) for a different effect. In experiments, Yoshida et al (2010) played sequences of tones of different lengths to English-learning and Japanese-learning infants of the age of 7--8 months.…”

Section: The Cross-linguistic Dimensionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Order in NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese

Lohmann¹,

Takada²

2014

Lingua

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In the emerging field of cross-linguistic studies on language production, one particularly interesting line of inquiry is possible differences between English and Japanese in ordering words and phrases. Previous research gives rise to the idea that there is a difference in accessing meaning versus form during linearization between these two languages. This assumption is based on observations of language-specific effects of the length factor on the order of phrases (short-before-long in English, long-before-short in Japanese). We contribute to the cross-linguistic exploration of such differences by investigating the variables underlying the internal order of NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese. Our quantitative analysis shows that similar influences underlie the ordering process across the two languages. Thus we do not find evidence for the aforementioned difference in accessing meaning versus form with this syntactic phenomenon. With regard to length, Japanese also exhibits a short-before-long preference. However, this tendency is significantly weaker in Japanese than in English, which we explain through an attenuating influence of the typical Japanese phrase structure pattern on the universal effect of short phrases being more accessible. We propose that a similar interaction between entrenched long-before-short schemas and universal accessibility effects is responsible for the varying effects of length in Japanese.

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Section: The Cross-linguistic Dimensionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Order in NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese

Lohmann¹,

Takada²

2014

Lingua

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“…As the prosodic contrast that differentiates between broad and narrow focus in EP is primarily marked by the timing of the pitch fall with respect to the stressed syllable, that is the temporal location of the pitch turning point (Frota, 2000(Frota, , 2002Fernandes 2007;Frota, 2014;Frota et al, in press), these findings add further evidence that infants initially process duration related contrasts differently from non-temporal pitch-based contrasts, such as pitch height/direction, and that in fact duration related contrasts are not successfully processed until later in development (Yoshida et al, 2010;Bion et al, 2011;Sato et al 2012;de la Mora et al, 2013). In the context of infants development of the perception of prosodic contrasts generally, our findings place the perception of broad and narrow focus prosody along a similar path to that found for stress-based contrasts (Jusczyk et al, 1993;Höhle et al, 2009;Skoruppa et al, 2009;Skoruppa et al, 2011;Skoruppa et al, 2013), and unlike that of lexical pitch accent and lexical tone (Mattock & Burnham, 2006;Mattock et al, 2008;Sato et al, 2009;Yeung et al, 2013), as well as intonation contrasts based on pitch height and pitch direction .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Also, both human infants and nonhuman animals group sound sequences into trochaic patterns based on pitch, but do not utilize duration as a cue to group sequences into iambic structures (de la Mora, Nespor & Toro, 2013). Furthermore, both English and Japanese infants show no preference for tones varying in duration at 5-6 months, but at 7-8 months a grouping preference emerges that mirrors the native language background (English infants showed a grouping preference for trochaic structures while Japanese infants showed no preference, similar to adult preferences - Yoshida, Iverson, Patel, Mazuka, Nito, Gervain & Werker, 2010), providing further evidence for later development of the perception of differences in duration relative to pitch differences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Infants’ Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus

Butler

Vigário

Frota

2015

Language Learning and Development

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Infants perceive intonation contrasts early in development, in contrast with lexical stress but similarly to lexical pitch accent. Previous studies have mostly focused on pitch height/direction contrasts, however, languages use a variety of pitch features to signal meaning, including differences in pitch timing. In this study, we investigate infants' perception of the prosodic contrast that cues the difference between all-new information (broad focus) and the highlighting of a particular word (narrow/contrastive focus) in European Portuguese (EP), and which has been described as having pitch timing as its key feature. Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm, EP learning infants discriminated this contrast at 12 months, but not at 7 months, deviating from previous findings of a precocious ability to perceive pitch distinctions. These results suggest different developmental trajectories of the perception of different prosodic contrasts, underlining the importance of the nature of the cues signalling a given contrast in a given language.(Word count -154)

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“…Existing studies with monolingual infants mostly tested these infants' grouping preferences, not the use of this preference as a potential bootstrapping cue. In Yoshida et al 22 study with monolingual OV and monolingual VO populations (Japanese and English, respectively), language-specific prosodic grouping was not observed at 5-6 months, but it appeared at 7-8 months. These authors did not test pitch/intensity, only duration as a cue, and the stimuli consisted of pure tones, not syllables.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Using speech sequences, Bion et al 18 found prosodic grouping in monolingual Italian infants at 7 months for the pitch/intensity contrast, but not for the durational one. The two studies used stimuli of different nature and complexity, that is, pure tones versus speech, which might explain why a durationbased grouping preference was found in one VO-exposed population (English infants in the Yoshida et al 22 study), but not in the other (Italian infants in the Bion et al 18 study). Further, recent evidence with animals suggests that trochaic grouping on the basis of pitch might be an automatic and universal feature of the mammalian auditory system, as rats also exhibit this grouping preference, whereas iambic grouping on the basis of duration might require language experience 16 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants

2013

Self Cite

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A central problem in language acquisition is how children effortlessly acquire the grammar of their native language even though speech provides no direct information about underlying structure. This learning problem is even more challenging for dual language learners, yet bilingual infants master their mother tongues as efficiently as monolinguals do. Here we ask how bilingual infants succeed, investigating the particularly challenging task of learning two languages with conflicting word orders (English: eat an apple versus Japanese: ringo-wo taberu 'apple.acc eat'). We show that 7-month-old bilinguals use the characteristic prosodic cues (pitch and duration) associated with different word orders to solve this problem. Thus, the complexity of bilingual acquisition is countered by bilinguals' ability to exploit relevant cues. Moreover, the finding that perceptually available cues like prosody can bootstrap grammatical structure adds to our understanding of how and why infants acquire grammar so early and effortlessly.

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The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: A Japanese-English cross-linguistic study

Cited by 107 publications

References 17 publications

Order in NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese

Order in NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese

Infants’ Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus

Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants

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