Four- and Ten-month-olds Distinguish between Native and Foreign-Accented Rhythm

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68081740%3A_____%2F19%3A00534222" target="_blank" >RIV/68081740:_____/19:00534222 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://www.bu.edu/bucld/files/2019/11/BUCLD-44-Schedule-and-Abstracts.pdf" target="_blank" >http://www.bu.edu/bucld/files/2019/11/BUCLD-44-Schedule-and-Abstracts.pdf</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Four- and Ten-month-olds Distinguish between Native and Foreign-Accented Rhythm

Original language description

It has been demonstrated that rhythmically very different languages are discriminated from early on and rhythmically similar languages are discriminated more lately (Mehler et al. 1988, Nazzi et al. 1998). Also infants’ sensitivity to dialectal varieties diminishes with age whereas recognition of foreign accent doesn’t, infants, toddlers and children trust more and learn better from native-accented speaker. (Kinzler et al. 2007, 2011). The present study is interested in the development of infants’ sensitivity to rhythm throughout the 1st year of life. Do infants discriminate native and foreign foreign-accented speech based on durational rhythm cues alone? What variety do they prefer? How does the preference develop with age? We tested preference to native versus foreign rhythm in 4-, 6-, 8- and 10- months old infants acquiring Czech (N = 59, 8 to 13 per age group). In a central fixation preference paradigm, infants listened to pseudorandomized trials with naturally produced native (Czech) and foreignized (towards stress-timed rhythm) accent. Infants’ looking time was recorded using PyHab, averaged per trial type, and analysed using mixed-effects models with Accent and Age as fixed effects, and per-participant and per-trial-order random intercepts and slopes for Accent. There was a main effect of Accent (-2.25 ms, t[25]=-4.5, p=.0001), found also when looking time was normalized for total trial length (effect 5%, t[25]=-2.3, p=.031), demonstrating that infants looked longer on foreign-accented than on native-accented trials. A marginally significant effect of Age (t[23]=-1.8, p=.086) indicates overall longer looking in younger than in older infants. The present results show that rhythmical patterns alone lead to discrimination of native and foreign-accented speech in young and older infants: whereas 4- months olds prefer native-accented speech, 10- months olds prefer foreign-accented speech. Our findings extend on the previously reported infants’ reliance on rhythm to differentiate languages and language varieties by showing that rhythmical patterns enable infants to discriminate slight variations in accent.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50101 - Psychology (including human - machine relations)

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA18-01799S" target="_blank" >GA18-01799S: The effect of talker accent on speech sound learning in infants</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů