What Babies Can Tell Us About Speech Perception

Babe Oral communication Perception: You Don't Want this Kid in Your Phonetics Class

Web log #eight in thePhonology Means Nothing and Other Astounding and Very Practical Facts almost Oral communication Sound Disorders Blog Series

For more than information well-nigh this series, encounter thePhonology Means Nothing Serial welcome page.

Past Ken Bleile, PhD

September 18, 2020

Considering an baby cannot know beforehand which language they must learn, a child is born able to acquire whatever language. This means, for instance, that an infant who grows upwardly learning English as well tin larn approximately seven,099 other languages (www.ethnologue.com). Speech perception offers a good example of the power of infant learning.

Speech Perception

You don't desire a newborn in your phonetics form, if it is graded on a curve. The world'south languages comprise approximately 600 dissimilar consonants and 200 different vowels (Ladefoged, 2001), and an infant is born potentially able to hear all of them. Development of voice communication perception in infants largely consists of fine-tuning a child's wide abilities in speech perception to fit the specific sounds in the linguistic communication of the community (Kuhl, 2004; Vihman, 1996). In the first year of life, major perceptual developments occur in intonation and speech sounds.

Intonation

An infant'southward pedagogy in oral communication begins before birth while floating in the womb and hearing the mother's voice as she speaks. Do you lot call back that swimming pool game in which children speak to each other nether water? That may exist like what an unborn child hears when their mother speaks: by and large intonation, very petty information well-nigh consonants and vowels.

I Know That Voice

Researchers know that an unborn infant hears the mother'south phonation because a newborn volition plow toward a recording of her voice when it plays from a speaker on ane side while another's voice plays on the other side (Mehler, Bertoncini, & Barriere, 1978). Such recognition may foster bonding between baby and parent early in life when a child is maximally dependent on others to survive.

Development

Infants continue to pay attention to intonation as they abound. At 3 months, an infant may imitate the intonation contour of a caregiver (Gratier & Devouche, 2011). Throughout infancy, intonation helps a child communicate even when the meaning of words is unclear. To illustrate, nearly 6 months, a child may stop an activeness when a parent says "no" in a commanding voice (Hedrick, Prather, & Tobin, 1984). Parents often assume this shows a child understands no and, past ceasing the action, is demonstrating compliance. However, compliance is based on intonation rather than knowing what no means. It's too perverse to recommend, but if parents wished they could change no to yes (or to dog or omnibus, for that matter), maintaining a commanding vocalisation, a six-month-old child would probable respond as if "no" were spoken.

Speech communication Sounds

To acquire a language, an infant must observe individual sounds buried in the rapid menses of speech—not an like shooting fish in a barrel task, since people seldom speak sounds in isolation, sounds modify in pronunciation depending on syllable position and presence of adjoining sounds, and people speak at rates of nine or more than sounds per 2nd. Finding voice communication sounds would probably be impossible were information technology not for an infant's mammalian heritage, which includes possessing a cochlea and hearing machinery capable of categorical perception—that is, able to split up the speech stream into individual sounds (Jusczyk, 1992; Werker & Hensch, 2015).

Development

Categorical perception exists at nascency, dividing the menstruum of voice communication. When tested in the weeks following commitment, an babe's perception of speech sounds in the ambience language is the same as their perception of speech sounds in other languages. During infancy, experience shapes a child's speech communication perception abilities, and by the commencement birthday, a child has superior perception for sounds in the language spoken in the customs compared to those in other languages (Kuhl, 2010; Zhang & Merzenich, 2001). In Kuhl's fine phrase, during infancy a child moves from "a citizen of the earth" to a citizen of a specific language. The presumed neurological basis of this change in speech perception is maturation of the primary auditory cortex, which is a sensory area next to Wernicke's area in the temporal lobe (Pascallis, de Hann, & Nelson, 2002).

Keeping What an Baby Started With

Can an infant retain the wide perceptual abilities it began with at birth? Not really—in the example of voice communication perception, loss of ability means an babe is learning, which is exactly what we desire. However, a bilingual infant retains the perceptual categories of the languages to which it is exposed. At that place even is some prove that an infant with a babysitter who speaks some other language retains the perceptual categories of the babysitter's language (Zhao & Kuhl, 2016). Importantly, exposure to electronic teachers such as audio and videotapes does not prove the aforementioned results (Kuhl, 2007, 2010). An baby appears to need interactions with a real person to learn and does not benefit in this expanse from tapes that do non modify and adjust in response to the child.

References

Gratier, 1000., & Devouche, E. (2011). Fake and repetition of prosodic contour in vocal interaction at 3 months. Developmental Psychology, 47, 67–76.

Hedrick, D., Prather, Eastward., & Tobin, A. (1984). Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development-R. Seattle: University of Washington Printing.

Jusczyk, P. (1992). Developing phonological categories from the spoken language signal. In C. Ferguson, L. Menn, & C. Stoel-Gammon (Eds.), Phonological development: Models research, implications. Timonium, Medico: York Press.

Kuhl, P. (2004). Early on language acquisition: Slap-up the oral communication code. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, five, 831–843.

Kuhl, P. (2007). Is speech learning 'gated' by the social brain? Developmental Science, ten, 110–120.

Kuhl, P. (2010). Brain mechanisms in early on language acquisition. Neuron, 67, 713–727.

Ladefoged, P. (2001). Vowels and consonants. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Mehler J., Bertoncini J., & Barriere One thousand. (1978). Infant recognition of female parent'due south voice. Perception, 7, 491–497.

Pascallis, O., de Haan, K., & Nelson, C. (2002). Is face up processing species specific during the first twelvemonth of life? Science, 296, 1321–1323.

Vihman, M. (1996). Phonological development: The origins of linguistic communication in the child. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Werker, J., & Hensch, T. (2015). Critical periods in speech perception: New directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 173–196.

Zhang, L., & Merzenich, M. (2001). Persistent and specific influences of early acoustic environments on primary auditory cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 1123–1130.

Zhao, T., & Kuhl, P. (2016). Furnishings of enriched auditory feel on infants' speech communication perception during the first year of life. Prospects, 46, 235–247.

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