Infants’ discrimination of intensity variation in multisyllabic stimuli

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Abstract
Two groups of 5‐ to 11‐month‐old infants were tested for their ability to discriminate within‐utterance intensity variations similar to those associated with linguistic stress. A visually reinforced discrimination procedure was used to determine sensitivity to increments in peak intensity for a final position, synthetic CVC syllable within either a bisyllabic (CVCVC) or a trisyllablic (CVCVCVC) context. Discrimination performance was above chance for a 2‐dB increment, and improved for 4‐ and 6‐dB increments. In addition, infants were more sensitive to intensity increments in the bisyllablic as compared to the trisyllabic context. Infant sensitivity for within‐utterance intensity variations is sufficient for the detection of some linguistic stress contrasts.

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