Referential Labeling Can Facilitate Phonetic Learning in Infancy

UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Referential Labeling Can Facilitate Phonetic Learning in Infancy Yeung, Ho Henny; Chen, Ke Heng; Werker, Janet Feldman, 1951-

Abstract

All languages employ certain phonetic contrasts when distinguishing words. Infant speech perception is rapidly attuned to these contrasts before many words are learned, thus phonetic attunement is thought to proceed independently of lexical and/or referential knowledge. Here we provide evidence to the contrary. Nine-month-old English-learning infants were trained to perceive a non-native Cantonese tone contrast. Two audiovisual pairings were consistently presented, which highlighted the target contrast (Object A with Tone X; Object B with Tone Y). Tone discrimination was then assessed. Results showed improved tone discrimination if object-tone pairings were perceived as being referential word labels, although this effect was modulated by vocabulary size. Results suggest how lexical and/or referential knowledge could play a role in phonetic attunement.

Item Metadata

Title	Referential Labeling Can Facilitate Phonetic Learning in Infancy
Creator	Yeung, Ho Henny; Chen, Ke Heng; Werker, Janet Feldman, 1951-
Publisher	Wiley
Date Issued	2014-05
Description	All languages employ certain phonetic contrasts when distinguishing words. Infant speech perception is rapidly attuned to these contrasts before many words are learned, thus phonetic attunement is thought to proceed independently of lexical and/or referential knowledge. Here we provide evidence to the contrary. Nine-month-old English-learning infants were trained to perceive a non-native Cantonese tone contrast. Two audiovisual pairings were consistently presented, which highlighted the target contrast (Object A with Tone X; Object B with Tone Y). Tone discrimination was then assessed. Results showed improved tone discrimination if object-tone pairings were perceived as being referential word labels, although this effect was modulated by vocabulary size. Results suggest how lexical and/or referential knowledge could play a role in phonetic attunement.
Subject	Infant; Word learning; Reference; Lexicon; Speech; Phonetic; Perception
Genre	Article; Postprint
Type	Text
Language	eng
Date Available	2019-12-20
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI	10.14288/1.0387245
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/72887
Affiliation	Arts, Faculty of; Psychology, Department of
Citation	Yeung, H.H., Chen, L.M., & Werker, J.F. (2014). Referential labeling can facilitate phonetic learning in infancy. Child Development, 85(3), 1036-1049.
Publisher DOI	10.1111/cdev.12185
Peer Review Status	Reviewed
Scholarly Level	Faculty
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

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