PubMed ID: 6734325
Author(s): Goodsitt JV, Morse PA, Ver Hoeve JN, Cowan N. Infant speech recognition in multisyllabic contexts. Child Dev. 1984 Jun;55(3):903-10.
Journal: Child Development, Volume 55, Issue 3, Jun 1984
In 2 infant speech recognition experiments using trisyllabic sequences, the amount of redundancy within nontarget, context syllables was manipulated. Infants 6 1/2 months old were trained to discriminate the syllables [ba] versus [du] in contexts that were either redundant (e.g., [ko ba ko] or [ti ba ti]) or mixed (e.g., [ko ba ti] or [ti ba ko]) A visually reinforced head-turning procedure was employed. In Experiment 1, context was manipulated between subjects, but in Experiment 2 each subject received all 4 contexts (2 redundant, 2 mixed). Infants consistently recognized the familiar target in all contexts, but did so more successfully in redundant than in mixed trisyllablic contexts. These results suggest that amount of speech redundancy may be an important factor in infants’ perceptual capabilities.