Newborns were once viewed as having the ability to distinguish between all possible speech contrasts present in the world’s languages. However, recent work suggests that this view is an oversimplification of young infants’ perceptual abilities. This study used the Stimulus Alternation Preference Procedure (SAPP) to examine 6- and 10- month-old infants’ ability to discriminate between voiced and voiceless stops (lexically contrastive in English) as well as voiced and pre-voiced stops (not lexically contrastive in English). Six-month-olds distinguished between voiced and voiceless stops, but not between voiced and pre-voiced stops. Ten-month-olds failed to discriminate either contrast. We tentatively conclude that 1) pre-voicing may be a subtle contrast requiring experience to perceive, and 2) the SAPP might not be an ideal method to examine discrimination abilities in 10-month-olds.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/33275 |
| Date | 20 November 2012 |
| Creators | Krieger, Dena |
| Contributors | Johnson, Elizabeth |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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