Categorization of Speech by Infants: Support for Speech-Sound Prototypes.

This study tested 6-month-old infants' categorization of speech stimuli to investigate whether infants organize speech categories around "prototypes." In Experiment 1, infants first discriminated single "good" exemplars from two different vowel categories. They were then tested with 64 novel exemplars, 32 from each vowel category. The test stimuli varied in the degree to which they conformed to adult-defined prototypes of the two categories. The results showed that infants correctly sorted the novel stimuli over 90% of the time. In Experiment 2, we trained two groups of infants, one with a good (prototypical) exemplar from a vowel category and the other with a poor (nonprototypical) exemplar. Then we tested both groups with 16 novel exemplars from that same vowel category. Generalization to novel members of the category was significantly greater following exposure to the prototypical exemplar. Results are consistent with a model of speech perception that holds that young human infants organize vowel categories around prototypes. This may contribute to their seemingly efficient processing of speech information, even in the first half year of life.

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