Structural generalizations over consonants and vowels in 11-month-old infants

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 116; no. 3; pp. 361 - 367
• Main Authors: Pons, Ferran, Toro, Juan M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.09.2010; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adults; Asymmetry; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Child psychology; Cognition; Cognitive psychology; Consonants; Consonants and vowels; Developmental psychology; Female; Functional asymmetries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Generalization; Generalization (Psychology); Humans; Infant; Infants; Language; Language Acquisition; Language Development; Language Processing; Language Tests; Learning; Learning Experience; Linguistics; Male; Newborn. Infant; Phonemes; Phonetics; Production and perception of spoken language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Rule learning; Speech Perception; Verbal Behavior; Vocabulary; Vowel; Vowels; Consonants and vowels; Rule learning; Language acquisition; Functional asymmetries; Speech perception; Human; Infant; Cognition; Verbal perception; Experimental study; Learning; Hearing; Consonant; Acquisition process; Language; Vowel; Language development; Perception; Speech; Rule
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.05.013

Recent research has suggested consonants and vowels serve different roles during language processing. While statistical computations are preferentially made over consonants but not over vowels, simple structural generalizations are easily made over vowels but not over consonants. Nevertheless, the origins of this asymmetry are unknown. Here we tested if a lifelong experience with language is necessary for vowels to become the preferred target for structural generalizations. We presented 11-month-old infants with a series of CVCVCV nonsense words in which all vowels were arranged according to an AAB rule (first and second vowels were the same, while the third vowel was different). During the test, we presented infants with new words whose vowels either followed or not, the aforementioned rule. We found that infants readily generalized this rule when implemented over the vowels. However, when the same rule was implemented over the consonants, infants could not generalize it to new instances. These results parallel those found with adult participants and demonstrate that several years of experience learning a language are not necessary for functional asymmetries between consonants and vowels to appear.