The effects of voicing and position in infants' perception of coda consonants

Abstract

Infants' ability to discriminate contrasting acoustic information has been demonstrated with many of the speech contrasts found in the world's languages. However, this ability seems to be positionally constrained. Contrasts in onsets are discriminated by young infants, but coda contrasts are not discriminated until around 16- to 20-months (Zamuner, 2006). Here we examine whether the contrast and the position influence discrimination in younger infants. We tested 64 12-month-olds' discrimination of voiceless (/p/, /k/), or voiced stops (/b/, /g/) in either word-final (VC; Exp. 1) or word-medial (VCCV; Exp. 2) position. Experiment 1 habituated infants to ap or ak (voiceless) or to ab or ag (voiced). At test infants heard the same token presented during habituation (same) and a novel token (switch). Planned comparisons revealed that only infants in the voiced condition looked longer to the switch than the same trial (p