Chinese and English Infants' Tone Perception: Evidence for Perceptual Reorganization

Autor/inn/en	Mattock, Karen; Burnham, Denis
Titel	Chinese and English Infants' Tone Perception: Evidence for Perceptual Reorganization
Quelle	In: Infancy, 10 (2006) 3, S.241-265 (25 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1525-0008
Schlagwörter	Tone Languages; Infants; Chinese; English; Auditory Discrimination; Perceptual Development; Longitudinal Studies; Age Differences; Speech; Acoustics; Case Studies; Foreign Countries; Australia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Tonsprache; Infant; Toddler; Toddlers; Kleinkind; China; Chinesen; English language; Englisch; Wahrnehmungsentwicklung; Longitudinal study; Longitudinal method; Longitudinal methods; Längsschnittuntersuchung; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Speaking; Sprechen; Akustik; Case study; Fallstudie; Case Study; Ausland; Australien
Abstract	Over half the world's population speaks a tone language, yet infant speech perception research has typically focused on consonants and vowels. Very young infants can discriminate a wide range of native and nonnative consonants and vowels, and then in a process of "perceptual reorganization" over the 1st year, discrimination of most nonnative speech sounds deteriorates. We investigated perceptual reorganization for tones by testing 6- and 9-month-old infants from tone (Chinese) and nontone (English) language environments for speech (lexical tone) and nonspeech (violin sound) tone discrimination in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Overall, Chinese infants performed equally well at 6 and 9 months for both speech and nonspeech tone discrimination. Conversely, English infants' discrimination of lexical tone declined between 6 and 9 months of age, whereas their nonspeech tone discrimination remained constant. These results indicate that the reorganization of tone perception is a function of the native language environment, and that this reorganization is linguistically based. (Contains 4 figures and 4 footnotes.) (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10