The Developmental Course of Lexical Tone Perception in the First Year of Life

Autor/inn/en	Mattock, Karen; Molnar, Monika; Polka, Linda; Burn, Denis
Titel	The Developmental Course of Lexical Tone Perception in the First Year of Life
Quelle	In: Cognition, 106 (2008) 3, S.1367-1381 (15 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0010-0277
DOI	10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.002
Schlagwörter	Vowels; Tone Languages; Infants; Auditory Perception; French; Cognitive Development; Child Development + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Tonsprache; Infant; Toddler; Toddlers; Kleinkind; Auditive Wahrnehmung; Akustische Wahrnehmung; Akustik; Französisch; Kognitive Entwicklung; Kindesentwicklung
Abstract	Perceptual reorganisation of infants' speech perception has been found from 6 months for consonants and earlier for vowels. Recently, similar reorganisation has been found for lexical tone between 6 and 9 months of age. Given that there is a close relationship between vowels and tones, this study investigates whether the perceptual reorganisation for tone begins earlier than 6 months. Non-tone language English and French infants were tested with the Thai low vs. rising lexical tone contrast, using the stimulus alternating preference procedure. Four- and 6-month-old infants discriminated the lexical tones, and there was no decline in discrimination performance across these ages. However, 9-month-olds failed to discriminate the lexical tones. This particular pattern of decline in nonnative tone discrimination over age indicates that perceptual reorganisation for tone does not parallel the developmentally prior decline observed in vowel perception. The findings converge with previous developmental cross-language findings on tone perception in English-language infants [Mattock, K., & Burnham, D. (2006). Chinese and English infants' tone perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization. "Infancy, 10"(3)], and extend them by showing similar perceptual reorganisation for non-tone language infants learning rhythmically different non-tone languages (English and French). (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10