Speech Perception in Infants

@article{Eimas1971SpeechPI,
  title={Speech Perception in Infants},
  author={Peter D. Eimas and Einar R. Siqueland and Peter W. Jusczyk and James M. Vigorito},
  journal={Science},
  year={1971},
  volume={171},
  pages={303 - 306}
}
Discriminiationi of synthetic speech sounds was studied in 1- and 4-month-old infants. The speech sounds varied along an acoustic dimension previously shown to cue phonemic distinctions among the voiced and voiceless stop consonants in adults. Discriminability was measured by an increase in conditioned response rate to a second speech sound after habituation to the first speech sound. Recovery from habituation was greater for a given acoustic difference when the two stimuli were from different… 
View on AAAS
pure.mpg.de
1,840 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
31
Background Citations
328
Methods Citations
36
Results Citations
23

1,840 Citations

Contextual effects in infant speech perception.

Infants, aged 2 to 4 months, discriminated synthetic speech patterns that varied in duration of the formant transitions; this variation provides information sufficient to signal the phonetic…

The perception of stop consonants by children.

  • C. Wolf
  • Psychology
    Journal of experimental child psychology
  • 1973

Auditory and linguistic processing of cues for place of articulation by infants

Two- and 3-month-old infants were found to discriminate the acoustic cues for the phonetic feature of place of articulation in a categorical manner; that is, evidence for the discriminability of two…

Statistical cues affect phonetic discrimination in Dutch infants

Abstract * Speech sounds are perceived categorically and this categorical perception is language-specific for adult listeners. Infants initially are “universal” listeners, capable of discriminating…

Linguistic experience and phonemic perception in infancy: a crosslinguistic study.

English- and Spanish-learning infants were tested for perception of 2 synthetic speech contrasts differing in voice onset time and the role of linguistic experience in the development of speech perception skills in infancy is discussed.

An investigation of young infants' perceptual representations of speech sounds.

Evidence of developmental changes in speech processing were noted for the first time with infants in this age range, and there was a tendency from global toward more specific representations on the part of the older infants.

Categorical perception of nonspeech sounds by 2-month-old infants

According to recent investigations, adult listeners perceive rise-time differences in both speech and nonspeech stimuli in a categorical manner (Cutting & Rosner, 1974). Adults labeled sawtooth-wave…

PERCEPTUAL REORGANIZATION OF VOWELS

During the first year of life, infants go from perceiving speech sounds primarily based on their acoustic characteristics, to perceiving speech sounds as belonging to speech sound categories relevant…

Auditory phonemic perception in dyslexia: Categorical identification and discrimination of stop consonants

Auditory and phonetic coding of the cues for speech: Discrimination of the [r-l] distinction by young infants

Infants, 2 and 3 months of age, were found to discriminte stimuli along the acoustic continuum underlying the phonetic contrast [r] vs. [l] in a nearly categorical manner. For an approximately equal…
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 18 REFERENCES

The Relation between Identification and Discrimination along Speech and Non-Speech Continua

In order to investigate the perception of simple unidimensional non-speech stimuli and synthetic speech stimuli in a manner permitting direct comparisons, identification and discrimination functions…

Minimal Rules for Synthesizing Speech

In attempting to synthesize speech by rule, one must take account of the fact that the perceptually discrete phonemes are typically encoded at the acoustic level into segments of approximately…

Language and Speech

This paper is intended to serve as an introduction both to the first session and to the Discussion Meeting as a whole. I begin by distinguishing natural human languages, in relation to their apparent…

Visual Reinforcement of Nonnutritive Sucking in Human Infants

High-amplitude sucking was studied as a conditioned operant response reinforced by visual feedback in 4-and 12-month infants. Typicalresponse acquisition and extinction effects were obtained. With…

The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information.

The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating the authors' stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of their subjects, and the concepts and measures provided by the theory provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions.

Perception of the speech code.

Theoretical notes. Motor theory of speech perception: a reply to Lane's critical review.

J . Psyclziat. Re.r

  • J . Psyclziat. Re.r
  • 1965

HaLuSt, C'ani. Ps tc/hiat

  • Ass. J
  • 1966

for generously making available the facilities of the Haskins Laboratories. We also thank