Vowel Categorization by Very Young Infants.

Six-month-old infants are known to categorize vowels despite variation in talker voice and pitch contour. Using the observer-based psychoacoustic procedure, this study asked whether 2- and 3-month-olds could categorize similarly. Infants were trained to respond whenever the vowel category alternated from /a/ to /i/ and to refrain from responding when the vowel category remained the same, despite variation in spectral cues associated with pitch and talker changes. Eighty percent of 2-, 3-, and 6-month-olds did not respond the first time a talker change occurred in the absence of a vowel change, suggesting that even the younger infants recognize these spectrally different sounds as perceptually equivalent

[1]  P. Morse,et al.  Continuous vowel discrimination in normal and at risk infants. , 1976, Child development.

[2]  T. M. Nearey.  Static, dynamic, and relational properties in vowel perception. , 1989, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[3]  W. Strange,et al.  Dynamic specification of coarticulated vowels spoken in sentence context. , 1989, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[4]  J. Hillenbrand.  Perceptual organization of speech sounds by infants. , 1983, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[5]  Neil A. Macmillan,et al.  Resolution for speech sounds: basic sensitivity and context memory on vowel and consonant continua , 1988 .

[6]  R. K. Clifton,et al.  Infant pitch perception: evidence for responding to pitch categories and the missing fundamental. , 1985, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[7]  S. Harnad.  Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition , 1990 .

[8]  D. M. Green,et al.  Signal detection theory and psychophysics , 1966 .

[9]  P. Kuhl.  Perception of auditory equivalence classes for speech in early infancy , 1983 .

[10]  L W Olsho,et al.  Auditory frequency resolution in human infancy. , 1990, Child development.

[11]  N A Macmillan,et al.  Detection theory analysis of group data: estimating sensitivity from average hit and false-alarm rates. , 1985, Psychological bulletin.

[12]  P. D. Eimas,et al.  Speech Perception in Infants , 1971, Science.

[13]  D. Teller.  The forced-choice preferential looking procedure: A psychophysical technique for use with human infants. , 1979 .

[14]  J. Werker,et al.  Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life , 1984 .

[15]  B. Younger,et al.  Development of Categorization Skills: Changes in the Nature or Structure of Infant Form Categories?. , 1988 .

[16]  P. Kuhl.  Speech perception in early infancy: perceptual constancy for spectrally dissimilar vowel categories. , 1979, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  Sandra E. Trehub,et al.  Infants' sensitivity to vowel and tonal contrasts. , 1973 .

[18]  L. Werner,et al.  Pure-tone sensitivity of 2- to 5-week-old infants , 1989 .

[19]  R G Karzon,et al.  Syllabic pitch perception in 2- to 3-month-old infants , 1989, Perception & psychophysics.

[20]  S. Trehub,et al.  Observational Measures of Auditory Sensitivity in Early Infancy. , 1991 .

[21]  L. W. Olsho,et al.  An Observer-Based Psychoacoustic Procedure for Use with Young Infants. , 1987 .

[22]  J D Miller,et al.  Discrimination of auditory target dimensions in the presence or absence of variation in a second dimension by infants , 1982, Perception & psychophysics.

[23]  Don McNicol,et al.  A Primer of Signal Detection Theory , 1976 .

[24]  K. Stevens,et al.  Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. , 1992, Science.

[25]  J Bertoncini,et al.  An investigation of young infants' perceptual representations of speech sounds. , 1988, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[26]  J Hillenbrand,et al.  Speech perception by infants: categorization based on nasal consonant place of articulation. , 1984, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[27]  M. Garrett,et al.  Pi ka pu: The perception of speech sounds by prelinguistic infants , 1975 .

[28]  J. Colombo,et al.  Pitch perception in young infants. , 1982 .

[29]  Janet F. Werker,et al.  Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change. , 1988 .

[30]  C. C. Wood.  Discriminability, response bias, and phoneme categories in discrimination of voice onset time. , 1976, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[31]  N I Durlach,et al.  Intensity perception. I. Preliminary theory of intensity resolution. , 1969, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[32]  G. E. Peterson,et al.  Control Methods Used in a Study of the Vowels , 1951 .