Lost and Found: Decline and Reemergence of Non-Native Vowel Discrimination in the First Year of Life

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Abstract

Our aim was to investigate perceptual attunement (PA) in vowel perception of Dutch-learning infants (6-8-10-month-olds) using the hybrid visual fixation paradigm (Houston et al., 2007). Infants were habituated to one phoneme and subsequently tested on items in which a token of the habituated phoneme alternated with either another token of the same phoneme, or a token from another phonemic category. Habituation involved tokens of multiple speakers. Infants were tested on a native (/aː/-/eː/) and non-native (/ɛ/-/æ/) contrast. The 6-month-olds (n = 38), 8-month-olds (n = 44) and 10-month-olds (n = 35) discriminated the native contrast. The non-native contrast was discriminated by the group of 6-month-olds (n = 42) but not the 8-month-olds (n = 47), in line with PA. However, the 10-month-olds (n = 39) also showed discrimination. We conclude that discrimination of phonetic categories can occur after perceptual attunement; discrimination performance is sensitive to tasks applied.

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APA

de Klerk, M., de Bree, E., Kerkhoff, A., & Wijnen, F. (2019). Lost and Found: Decline and Reemergence of Non-Native Vowel Discrimination in the First Year of Life. Language Learning and Development, 15(1), 14–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2018.1497490

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