Visual Sonority Modulates Infants' Attraction to Sign Language

The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLanguage learning and development Vol. 14; no. 2; pp. 130 - 148
Main Authors Stone, Adam, Petitto, Laura-Ann, Bosworth, Rain
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Mahwah Psychology Press 03.04.2018
Subjects
Age Differences
Attention
Auditory Perception
Brain
Computer Assisted Testing
Control Groups
Cues
Eye Movements
eye tracking
Finger Spelling
Hearing
Infant Behavior
Infants
Language Acquisition
Language Enrichment
Linguistic Theory
Native language acquisition
Oral Language
phonology
Preferences
Sign Language
Sonority
Speech perception
Statistical Analysis
Syllables
Visual Perception
Young Children
California (San Diego)
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Summary:The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing 6- and 12-month-olds with no sign language experience as they watched fingerspelling stimuli that either conformed to high sonority (well-formed) or low sonority (ill-formed) values, which are relevant to syllabic structure in signed language. Younger babies showed highly significant looking preferences for well-formed, high sonority fingerspelling, while older babies showed no preference for either fingerspelling variant, despite showing a strong preference in a control condition. The present findings suggest babies possess a sensitivity to specific sonority-based contrastive cues at the core of human language structure that is subject to perceptual narrowing, irrespective of language modality (visual or auditory), shedding new light on universals of early language learning.
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ISSN:1547-5441
1547-3341
DOI:10.1080/15475441.2017.1404468