PERCEPTUAL SEGMENTATION OF SPEECH BY INFANTS

本补助金中概述的研究计划的目的 一项提案是确定人类婴儿是否在第二个六个 几个月的生命能够感知地分割流利的语言 转换成单词长度单位， 母语 尽管过去15年的许多研究 已经记录了复杂的言语歧视 婴儿的能力，这些研究集中在 婴儿对孤立语音片段的感知。 研究 基于语音产生语音分割受到以下限制 婴儿一旦学会了说话， 产生和事实上，知觉分割必须 在单词产生之前。 与人们对 孤立的语音片段，流畅语音的感知 需要在线处理和提取离散的 语音波形的声学单元，其特征在于 单词边界的不一致声学标记。 两 关键问题是：（a）婴儿能否提取熟悉的声音 单位从流利的讲话，并认识到这一等价 在不同的上下文中的单位，和（B）是这个提取过程 是由声学单位进入词典所促成的吗？ 本文将采用三种策略来研究语音分割 在6到12个月大的婴儿身上。 首先，一个操作性的转头程序 视觉习惯程序将用于评估婴儿的 从流利的语音中提取单词长度单位。 变量 尽管为了影响分割（例如，说话速度，语调 和重音，相邻语音片段的协同发音）将被 对这些片段提取任务进行了检查。 第二，演讲 从母亲到婴儿的输入将被分析， 详细描述其变化性和一致性 将分割的声学提示呈现给婴儿。 短期“培训”研究将评估参考资料在以下方面的作用： 婴儿对单词和假词的切分。 第三，婴儿 对语速和重音模式变化的偏好 以确定这些超音段 流利的语言影响婴儿的注意力。 采取 总之，这些研究将澄清一个研究不足但必不可少的问题， 词汇和句法所需的语言方面 发展

The purpose of the program of research outlined in this grant proposal is to determine whether human infants in the second six months of life are able to perceptually segment fluent speech into word-length units that could be used to understand their native language. Although many studies in the past 15 years have documented the sophisticated speech discrimination capacities of young infants, those studies have focussed on the infant's perception of isolated speech segments. Studies of speech segmentation based on speech production are limited by the poor articulatory control shown by infants once words are produced and by the fact that perceptual segmentation must precede word production. In contrast to the perception of isolated speech segments, the perception of fluent speech requires on-line processing ant the extraction of discrete acoustic units from a speech waveform characterized by inconsistent acoustic markers for word boundaries. Two questions are critical: (a) can infants extract a familiar acoustic unit from fluent speech and recognize the equivalence of this unit in various contexts, and (b) is this extraction process facilitated by the entry of acoustic units into the lexicon? Three strategies will be employed to study speech segmentation in 6- to 12-month-olds. First, an operant headturning procedure and a visual habituation procedure will be used to assess infants' extraction of word-length units from fluent speech. Variables though to influence segmentation (e.g., speaking rate, intonation and stress, coarticulation of adjacent phonetic segments) will be examined on these segment extraction tasks. Second, the speech INPUT to the infant from the mother will be analyzed in great detail to describe the variability and consistency with which acoustic cues to segmentation are presented to the infant. Short-term "training" studies will assess the role of reference in infants' segmentation of words and pseudowords. Third, infants' preferences for variations in speaking rate and stress patterns will be obtained to determine whether these suprasegmental aspects of fluent speech influence infants' attention. Taken together, these studies will clarify an under-studied but essential aspect of language required for lexical and syntactic development.