Infant dependence on acoustic cue redundancy: discrimination of the word-final voicing contrast, /t/-/d/

Authors

  • M.A. Orme Sch. of Commun. Sci. & Disorders, McGill Univ., Montreal, Que., Canada
  • L. Polka Sch. of Commun. Sci. & Disorders, McGill Univ., Montreal, Que., Canada

Keywords:

hearing, speech recognition, acoustic cue redundancy, word-final voicing contrast, infants, adults, phonetic discrimination, vowel duration, phonetic structure, native language

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate further perception of word-final stop voicing contrasts in infants and adults in order to test these hypotheses about infant phonetic discrimination skills. The first hypothesis was that, like second language learners, infants will show a greater reliance on acoustic cue redundancy than will native English-speaking adults. Thus, removing one or more of the multiple acoustic cues that distinguish this contrast would be expected to produce a drop in discrimination performance. The second hypothesis was that vowel duration would be the most salient cue for infants, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in native English-speaking adults and has been suggested by Eilers et al (1977). Accordingly, infants were expected to show their best discrimination performance when the vowel duration cue is present. Finally, previous cross-language studies have indicated that infants are becoming more sensitive to the phonetic structure of the native language in the latter half of the first year of life (Werker & Pegg, 1992). Given that the infants in this study were being tested on a native language contrast, it was hypothesized that older infants (10-12 month olds) may show better discrimination performance than younger infants (6-8 month olds)

Additional Files

Published

1994-09-01

How to Cite

1.
Orme M, Polka L. Infant dependence on acoustic cue redundancy: discrimination of the word-final voicing contrast, /t/-/d/. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 1994 Sep. 1 [cited 2024 Oct. 4];22(3):131-2. Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/884

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 3 (1994)

Section

Proceedings of the Acoustics Week in Canada

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