The robustness of infants' early word representations

Authors

  • Marieke Van Heugten Dept. of Psychology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road N, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada
  • Elizabeth K. Johnson Dept. of Psychology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road N, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada

Keywords:

Infant-directed speech, Word recognition, Word representations

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the way infants started recognizing acoustically distinct realizations of words before developing mental lexicon. The study also investigated the possibility earlier studies underestimating infants' early word recognition abilities. It was proposed that presenting infants with brief exposure to disembodied unfamiliar voices producing words was not an ecologically valid measure of their capabilities. Twenty-four mothers and fathers were audio-taped, as their infants participated in the study. Mothers recorded two six-sentence passage in infant-directed speech that contained a target word occurring in every sentence. Investigations revealed that 7.5-month infants recognized familiarized words across speakers of different genders without facing problems with these words being presented in familiar or unfamiliar voices.

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Published

2009-09-01

How to Cite

1.
Van Heugten M, Johnson EK. The robustness of infants’ early word representations. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 2009 Sep. 1 [cited 2023 Mar. 30];37(3):148-9. Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/2177

Issue

Vol. 37 No. 3 (2009)

Section

Proceedings of the Acoustics Week in Canada

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