Haskins Publications

Number	981
Year	1995
Drawer	18
Entry Date	07/01/1998
Authors	Best, Catherine T., McRoberts, Gerald W., LaFleur, Rosemarie, and Silver-Isenstadt, Jean.
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Publication	Infant Behavior and Development, 18, 339-350.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0981.pdf
Abstract	Young infants discriminate nonnative consonant contrasts, yet 10-12-month-olds discriminate most nonnative contrasts poorly, like adults. However, English-speaking adults and 6-14- month-old infants discriminate Zulu clicks, consistent with a model predicting that listeners who have a native phonology assimilate nonnative consonants to native categories when possible but hear non-assimilable (NA) consonants as nonspeech sounds (Best, McRoberts, & Sithole, 1988). Non-assimilable contrasts, thus, avoid language-specific effects and are discriminated, whereas consonants assimilated equally into a single category (SC) are discriminated poorly by listeners showing language-specific influences; other possible assimilation patterns show poor to excellent discrimination. This study directly compared discrimination of NA clicks and SC ejectives by 6-8- and 10-12-month-olds with a conditioned fixation habituation procedure. Consistent with predictions, the younger group discriminated both both nonnative contrasts and a control English contrast, whereas the older group discriminated only the NA and English contrasts.
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