Word-form familiarity bootstraps infant speech segmentation.
@article{AltvaterMackensen2013WordformFB,
title={Word-form familiarity bootstraps infant speech segmentation.},
author={Nicole Altvater-Mackensen and Nivedita Mani},
journal={Developmental science},
year={2013},
volume={16 6},
pages={
980-90
}
}At about 7 months of age, infants listen longer to sentences containing familiar words - but not deviant pronunciations of familiar words (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995). This finding suggests that infants are able to segment familiar words from fluent speech and that they store words in sufficient phonological detail to recognize deviations from a familiar word. This finding does not examine whether it is, nevertheless, easier for infants to segment words from sentences when these words sound similar…
32 Citations
British English infants segment words only with exaggerated infant-directed speech stimuli
- PsychologyCognition
- 2016
Development of infants' segmentation of words from native speech: a meta-analytic approach.
- PsychologyDevelopmental science
- 2016
It is concluded that models of infant information processing that are frequently cited in this domain may not, in fact, apply in the case of segmenting words from native speech.
Early Word Segmentation in Naturalistic Environments: Limited Effects of Speech Register
- Psychology
- 2016
We examined 7.5-month-old infants' ability to segment words from infant- and adult-directed speech (IDS and ADS). In particular, we extended the standard design of most segmentation studies by…
Constructing a Proto-Lexicon: An Integrative View of Infant Language Development
- Linguistics
- 2016
This review focuses on infants' discovery of word forms in speech, their construction of a proto-lexicon, and the development of linguistic knowledge during their first year and a half of life.
Sixteen-Month-Old Infants’ Segment Words from Infant- and Adult-Directed Speech
- Psychology
- 2016
It is shown that 16-month-old infants successfully segment words from a natural language speech stream presented in the adult-directed register and recognize these words later when presented in isolation, although infants’ success at segmenting words from adult- directed speech correlated with their vocabulary size.
Dual Language Statistical Word Segmentation in Infancy: Simulating a Language-Mixing Bilingual Environment.
- LinguisticsDevelopmental science
- 2020
The findings suggest that segmenting words in a language-mixing environment is challenging, but infants possess a nascent ability to recruit phonetic cues to segment words from one of two overlapping languages in a bilingual-like environment.
Exploring the “anchor word” effect in infants: Segmentation and categorisation of speech with and without high frequency words
- Linguistics, PsychologyPloS one
- 2020
It is proposed that high-frequency words must reach a critical threshold of familiarity before they can be of significant benefit to learning.
Word Segmentation Cues in German Child-Directed Speech: A Corpus Analysis
- PsychologyLanguage and speech
- 2021
A comprehensive corpus analysis of German child-directed speech (CDS) using data from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database reveals the availability of word stress, transitional probabilities (TPs), and lexical and sublexical frequencies as potential cues for word segmentation, and supports the possibility that infants draw on multiple converging cues to segment their input.
Mark My Words: High Frequency Marker Words Impact Early Stages of Language Learning
- Psychology, LinguisticsJournal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition
- 2019
It is proposed that high-frequency words may assist early grammatical categorization, while speech segmentation is still being learned.
The Distribution and Prosodic Realization of Verb Forms in German Infant-Directed Speech
- LinguisticsLREC
- 2018
It appears that German infants ought to be able to extract verbs as early as nouns, given appropriate stimulus materials, and many verb forms are prime candidates for early segmentation.
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 45 REFERENCES
Infants exposed to fluent natural speech succeed at cross-gender word recognition.
- PsychologyJournal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR
- 2012
Under more naturalistic listening conditions, 7.5-month-olds exhibit the ability to recognize words in the face of substantial indexical variation regardless of whether speakers are familiar, which suggests that early word representations are, at least to some extent, independent of the speaker's gender.
Infants’ sensitivity to allophonic cues for word segmentation
- PsychologyPerception & psychophysics
- 1999
A series of four experiments was conducted to determine whether English-learning infants can use allophonic cues to word boundaries to segment words from fluent speech and what implications these findings have for understanding how word segmentation skills develop.
Can Infants Map Meaning to Newly Segmented Words?
- PsychologyPsychological science
- 2007
This work provides the first demonstration that exposure to word forms in a statistical word segmentation task facilitates subsequent word learning, and prior segmentation opportunities, but not mere frequency of exposure, facilitated infants learning of object labels.
Infants′ Detection of the Sound Patterns of Words in Fluent Speech
- PsychologyCognitive Psychology
- 1995
The results of these studies suggest that some ability to detect words in fluent speech contexts is present by 7 1/2 months of age.
Infant word segmentation revisited: edge alignment facilitates target extraction.
- PsychologyDevelopmental science
- 2006
It is demonstrated that infants segment words from the edges of an utterance more readily than from the middle of an gibberish utterance, and infants segments words from utterance-final position just as readily as they segment Words from utterANCE-initial position.
Overcoming the Effects of Variation in Infant Speech Segmentation: Influences of Word Familiarity.
- PsychologyInfancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
- 2008
Findings suggest that early word recognition is facilitated in cases where infants have had significant exposure to items, but at later stages, infants are able to segment items regardless of their presumed familiarity.
Words and syllables in fluent speech segmentation by French-learning infants: An ERP study
- LinguisticsBrain Research
- 2010
Lexical competition in young children’s word learning
- Psychology, LinguisticsCognitive Psychology
- 2007
Words as anchors: known words facilitate statistical learning.
- Psychology, LinguisticsExperimental psychology
- 2010
This study shows that the statistical segmentation of words from speech stream by adults is facilitated by the presence of known words in the stream, which demonstrates an interplay between top-down lexical segmentation and bottom-up statistical learning.

