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Infants' learning of novel segments is modulated by prosody
Chládková, Kateřina ; Podlipský, V.J. ; Nudga, Natalia ; Paillereau, Nikola ; Kynčlová, Kateřina ; Šimáčková, Š.
Young infants recognize atypical realisations of native-language speech. Later they learn words better from native-accented talkers. However, 6-month-olds preferentially listen to unfamiliar speech. We tested whether the learning of new vowels matches 6-month-olds’ listening preferences, being more effective from nonnative-accented speech. We exposed Czech six-month-olds to delexicalised utterances with consonants replaced by [f] and vowels by 405 tokens sampled from a bimodal [ɛ]-[æ] distribution, a contrast absent from Czech, and with either native or atypical rhythm. Discrimination of [ɛ]-[æ] was then tested in an alternating/non-alternating paradigm. Longer first-look duration to non-alternating than to alternating trials – indicating a learning effect – was found in infants familiarised with the novel contrast in atypical rhythm, such effect was not\ndetected after familiarisation with native rhythm. Six-month-olds thus more effectively exploit distributional information about novel vowels from non-native rhythm, which matches their previously reported preferences for listening to novel over familiar accents.
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