Assessing the role of experience on infants' speech discrimination
- 1 June 1982
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Child Language
- Vol. 9 (3) , 527-542
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s030500090000489x
Abstract
Several studies have investigated the effect of a particular linguistic environment on infants' discrimination of voicing for stop consonants. Exposure to contrasts phonemic for a community has been said to heighten preverbal infants' sensitivity to these contrasts.This paper argues that phonetic input cannot be specified and ‘experience’ cannot be defined in this context without knowing how infants perceptually structure speech input. Consequently, the discrimination paradigm provides no test for the effect of experience on infants' speech discrimination. The conditions to be met in order to conclude an effect of experience are outlined.Keywords
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