Vowels, then consonants: Early bias switch in recognizing segmented word forms

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

“…For example, orienting longer to a vowel compared with a consonant mispronunciation (cMP) would indicate a consonant bias, as the vMP conserves consonant information. Our study differs from these in that we use the infants’ own names (contrary to Nishibayashi & Nazzi, 2016) and familiarize infants with the CP of their name (contrary to Bouchon et al, 2015). As a consequence of either or both of these differences, we may change the difficulty of the present task, which may reverse the effects as predicted by the model of Hunter and Ames (1988).…”

“…In Experiment 1, we sought to extend previous evidence of a switch from vowel to consonant bias during the first year of life in unfamiliar words (Hochmann et al, 2011, 2017; Nishibayashi & Nazzi, 2016) to familiar words, specifically own‐name recognition. Although the experiment was inspired by Bouchon et al (2015), it differs from it because, rather than comparing correct pronunciations (CPs) with consonant or vowel mispronunciations (cMPs; vMPs) in two separate experiments, we used a conflict task (Nishibayashi & Nazzi, 2016) and directly compared how long infants’ attend to a cMP or vMP of their own name within a single experiment. If infants process consonant and vowel information differently during lexical processing, we expect them to differentially orient to the two kinds of mispronunciations.…”

“…If infants process consonant and vowel information differently during lexical processing, we expect them to differentially orient to the two kinds of mispronunciations. Related tasks with French‐learning infants find that infants orient longer to word forms that best match the word form they are familiar or have been familiarized with (Bouchon et al, 2015; Nishibayashi & Nazzi, 2016). For example, orienting longer to a vowel compared with a consonant mispronunciation (cMP) would indicate a consonant bias, as the vMP conserves consonant information.…”

“…Thus far, only one study has directly examined the timing of consonant bias emergence using the exact same stimuli and method. In a series of word form segmentation experiments, Nishibayashi and Nazzi (2016) examined the emergence of the consonant bias with 6‐ and 8‐month‐old French‐learning infants, finding a vowel bias in 6‐month‐olds but a consonant bias in 8‐month‐olds (see Von Holzen et al, 2018 for similar ERP results with 8‐month‐olds). Other indirect evidence comes from another type of lexical processing, familiar word form recognition.…”

“…The first goal of the present study, in line with Bouchon et al (2015), is to extend the developmental trajectory of the vowel to consonant bias shift, to infant's processing of their own name. We begin our investigation with two ages where a vowel to consonant bias shift has been previously found for unfamiliar words or pseudowords (Hochmann, Benavides‐Varela, Nespor, & Mehler, 2011; Hochmann, Benavides‐Varela, Nespor, Mehler, & Flo, 2017; Nishibayashi & Nazzi, 2016), at 5 and 8 months (Experiment 1). This investigation is then extended to 11 months of age in Experiment 2, since a consonant bias has been found at that age for familiar words by Poltrock and Nazzi (2015).…”