![]() Adults find it easy to distinguish instances of and that differ only in VOT. VOT, the amount of time between the start of a consonant and the beginning of vocal vibrations, differentiates voiced consonants like, which have a short VOT, and unvoiced consonants like, which have a longer VOT. Eimas et al.'s experiments tested infants' abilities to tell apart the syllables and, where the materials were synthesized to vary in voice onset time (VOT). The first wave of studies of infant speech perception followed up on Eimas et al.'s studies of consonant discrimination. Leopold 1939), a point discussed further below. ![]() Lisker & Abramson 1967) than to the more ethological tradition of early diarists like Darwin or Leopold (e.g. One consequence of this was that the modern era of controlled experimentation on infants' receptive language ability was more tightly linked to the speech science pioneered by researchers at the Haskins Laboratories (e.g. This work, described in more detail below, used methods that were also being used in studies of categorization and sensory perception in non-linguistic domains. ![]() 1992), showing adaptation to the native language's phonology. 1971), showing presumably innate biases in perceptual categorization, and the later studies of Werker & Tees ( 1983, 1984), and Kuhl (e.g. The intellectual ancestors of experiments in this tradition are the classic studies of Eimas and his colleagues ( Eimas et al. But in contrast to these diarists' work, laboratory studies of infants have concentrated less on meaningful interpretation of speech than on perceptual development in the categorization of speech sounds. Observers as early as Taine (1876) and Darwin (1877) commented on the receptive language understanding of their infants, noting cases in which children responded appropriately to spoken words. Then we discuss subsequent work specifically exploring lexical knowledge, addressing the evidence that infants do learn words, describing how infants find those words in speech, and considering how lexical knowledge contributes to language development in infancy and beyond. We begin by describing infant speech research up to the late 1980s, adopting a chronological perspective. This article reviews the evidence showing infants' word learning, and suggests ways in which this learning is an important contributor to the rapid pace of language acquisition in childhood ( Jusczyk 1997). That said, however, infants learn more than just the sounds of their language in the first year. These facts about speech-sound learning in infancy have, justifiably, captured the attention of many developmental psychologists and linguists, and have contributed to broad recognition of the importance of infant learning to language acquisition. By the end of the first year, the average child has become attuned to his or her language with a facility that long-labouring adult second-language learners can only envy. ![]() ![]() Precocious development of the auditory system, and innate sensitivity to acoustic variation along linguistically important dimensions, allow for rapid learning of the native language's consonants and vowels, in some cases even before children have attempted to say their first words. Infants begin learning their native language by discovering aspects of its sound structure. ![]()
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