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. 2019 Dec:193:103991.
doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.06.003. Epub 2019 Sep 14.

Underspecification in toddlers' and adults' lexical representations

Jie Ren  1 , Uriel Cohen Priva  2 , James L Morgan  2
Affiliations

Underspecification in toddlers' and adults' lexical representations

Jie Ren et al. Cognition. 2019 Dec.

Abstract

Recent research has shown that toddlers' lexical representations are phonologically detailed, quantitatively much like those of adults. Studies in this article explore whether toddlers' and adults' lexical representations are qualitatively similar. Psycholinguistic claims (Lahiri & Marslen-Wilson, 1991; Lahiri & Reetz, 2002, 2010) based on underspecification (Kiparsky, 1982 et seq.) predict asymmetrical judgments in lexical processing tasks; these have been supported in some psycholinguistic research showing that participants are more sensitive to noncoronal-to-coronal (pop → top) than to coronal-to-noncoronal (top → pop) changes or mispronunciations. Three experiments using on-line visual world procedures showed that 19-month-olds and adults displayed sensitivities to both noncoronal-to-coronal and coronal-to-noncoronal mispronunciations of familiar words. No hints of any asymmetries were observed for either age group. There thus appears to be considerable developmental continuity in the nature of early and mature lexical representations. Discrepancies between the current findings and those of previous studies appear to be due to methodological differences that cast doubt on the validity of claims of psycholinguistic support for lexical underspecification.

Keywords: Developmental continuity; Lexical representation; Mispronunciation processing; Phonological details; Underspecification.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Sample visual stimulus pair in Experiments 1a & 1b.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Predicted results from the hypothesis of underspecification.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Experiment 1a: Toddlers’ sensitivities to different directions of onset mispronunciations. Error bars show two standard errors computed via subject-wise non-parametric
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Experiment 1b: Toddlers’ sensitivities to different directions of coda mispronunciations. Error bars show two standard errors computed via subject-wise non-parametric bootstrap.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Experiment 1a: Time course data of toddlers’ sensitivities to different directions of onset mispronunciations
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Experiment 1b: Time course data of toddlers’ sensitivities to different directions of coda mispronunciations
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Sample visual stimulus pair in Experiments 2a & 2b.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Experiment 2a: Adults’ sensitivities to different directions of onset mispronunciations.Error bars show two standard errors computed via subject-wise non-parametric bootstrap.
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Experiment 2b: Adults’ sensitivities to different directions of coda mispronunciations. Error bars show two standard errors computed via subject-wise non-parametric bootstrap.
Figure 10.
Figure 10.
Experiment 2a: Time course data of adults’ sensitivities to different directions of onset mispronunciations
Figure 11.
Figure 11.
Experiment 2b: Time course data of adults’ sensitivities to different directions of mispronunciations
Figure 12.
Figure 12.
Adults’ sensitivities to different directions of onset mispronunciations when the baseline phase is removed from the task. Error bars show two standard errors computed via subject-wise non-parametric bootstrap.
Figure 13.
Figure 13.
Time course of adults’ sensitivities to different directions of onset mispronunciations when the baseline phase is removed from the task.
Figure 14.
Figure 14.
Simulation of category assignments under the assumption of Gaussian distribution with the variance of the broad category twice as the narrow category. Graph excepted from Ren & Austerweil (2017).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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