Statistical phonetic learning in infants: facilitation and feature generalization
Statistical phonetic learning in infants: facilitation and feature generalization
复制标题
DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00653.x
复制
发表时间：
2008-01-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Aslin, Richard N.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Maye, Jessica;Weiss, Daniel J.;Aslin, Richard N.
在生命的第一年里，婴儿从能够区分母语和非母语语音对比的泛化听者发展为专门听者，其辨别模式密切反映了母语的语音系统。Maye， Werker和Gerken（2002）最近的研究为这一现象提出了一个统计解释，表明婴儿可能会因为对输入语言中声音的统计分布的敏感性而失去区分某些外语对比的能力。在本文中，我们研究了婴儿语音感知的增强过程，即最初困难的语音对比在定义两个在母语中起功能作用的类别时变得更好。特别是，我们证明了暴露于8个月大的婴儿语音输入的双峰统计分布会导致对困难对比的辨别增加。此外，这种暴露也有助于辨别不熟悉的对比与熟悉过程中呈现的对比具有相同的语音特征，这表明婴儿在抽象特征表征中提取的声学/语音信息是不变的。
Over the course of the first year of life, infants develop from being generalized listeners, capable of discriminating both native and non-native speech contrasts, into specialized listeners whose discrimination patterns closely reflect the phonetic system of the native language(s). Recent work by Maye, Werker and Gerken (2002) has proposed a statistical account for this phenomenon, showing that infants may lose the ability to discriminate some foreign language contrasts on the basis of their sensitivity to the statistical distribution of sounds in the input language. In this paper we examine the process of enhancement in infant speech perception, whereby initially difficult phonetic contrasts become better discriminated when they define two categories that serve a functional role in the native language. In particular, we demonstrate that exposure to a bimodal statistical distribution in 8-month-old infants' phonetic input can lead to increased discrimination of difficult contrasts. In addition, this exposure also facilitates discrimination of an unfamiliar contrast sharing the same phonetic feature as the contrast presented during familiarization, suggesting that infants extract acoustic/phonetic information that is invariant across an abstract featural representation.