Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Nov;126(5):EL134-9.
doi: 10.1121/1.3239465.

Development of perceptual sensitivity to extrinsic vowel duration in infants learning American English

Eon-Suk Ko, Melanie Soderstrom, James Morgan

Development of perceptual sensitivity to extrinsic vowel duration in infants learning American English

Eon-Suk Ko et al. J Acoust Soc Am. 2009 Nov.

Abstract

8- and 14-month-old infants' perceptual sensitivity to vowel duration conditioned by post-vocalic consonantal voicing was examined. Half the infants heard CVC stimuli with short vowels, and half heard stimuli with long vowels. In both groups, stimuli with voiced and voiceless final consonants were compared. Older infants showed significant sensitivity to mismatching vowel duration and consonant voicing in the short condition but not the long condition; younger infants were not sensitive to such mismatching in either condition. The results suggest that infants' sensitivity to extrinsic vowel duration begins to develop between 8 and 14 months.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Infants’ preferences for VLE-matching vs mismatching word tokens.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Boersma, P., and Weenink, D. (2007). PRAAT: Doing Phonetics by Computer Version 4.6.38, from http://www.praat.org/ (Last viewed November, 2009).
    1. Crowther, C. S., and Mann, V. A. (1992). “Native language factors affecting use of vocalic cues to final consonant voicing in English,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. JASMAN 92, 711–722.10.1121/1.403996 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Denes, P. (1955). “Effect of duration on the perception of vocing,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. JASMAN 27, 761–764.10.1121/1.1908020 - DOI
    1. Dietrich, C., Swingley, D., and Werker, J. F. (2007). “Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. PNASA6 104, 16027–16031.10.1073/pnas.0705270104 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Eilers, R. (1977). “Context-sensitive perception of naturally produced stop and fricative consonants by infants,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. JASMAN 61, 1321–1336.10.1121/1.381435 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types