Search for: All records

Before they start to talk, infants learn the form and meaning of many common words. In the present work, we investigated the nature of this word knowledge, testing the specificity of very young infants’ (6-14 months) phonological represen- tations in an internet-based language-guided-looking task using correct pronunciations and initial-consonant mispronunciations of common words. Across the current sample (n=78 out of 96 pre-registered), infants’ proportion looking to the target (named image) versus the distracter was significantly lower when the target word was mispronounced, indicating sensitivity to phonological deviation. Performance patterns varied by age group. The youngest group (6-8 months, n=30) was at chance in both conditions, the middle group (9-11 months, n=21) showed significant recognition of correct pronunciations and a marginal mispronunciation effect, and the oldest age group (12-14 months, n=27) demonstrated the mature pattern: significant recognition and a significant mispronunciation effect. Ongoing work is completing the pre-registered sample size. 

Abstract Psycholinguistic research on children's early language environments has revealed many potential challenges for language acquisition. One is that in many cases, referents of linguistic expressions are hard to identify without prior knowledge of the language. Likewise, the speech signal itself varies substantially in clarity, with some productions being very clear, and others being phonetically reduced, even to the point of uninterpretability. In this study, we sought to better characterize the language‐learning environment of American English‐learning toddlers by testing how well phonetic clarity and referential clarity align in infant‐directed speech. Using an existing Human Simulation Paradigm (HSP) corpus with referential transparency measurements and adding new measures of phonetic clarity, we found that the phonetic clarity of words’ first mentions significantly predicted referential clarity (how easy it was to guess the intended referent from visual information alone) at that moment. Thus, when parents’ speech was especially clear, the referential semantics were also clearer. This suggests that young children could use the phonetics of speech to identify globally valuable instances that support better referential hypotheses, by homing in on clearer instances and filtering out less‐clear ones. Such multimodal “gems” offer special opportunities for early word learning. Research HighlightsIn parent‐infant interaction, parents’ referential intentions are sometimes clear and sometimes unclear; likewise, parents’ pronunciation is sometimes clear and sometimes quite difficult to understand.We find that clearer referential instances go along with clearer phonetic instances, more so than expected by chance.Thus, there are globally valuable instances (“gems”) from which children could learn about words’ pronunciations and words’ meanings at the same time.Homing in on clear phonetic instances and filtering out less‐clear ones would help children identify these multimodal “gems” during word learning.