Quantifying the role of rhythm in infants' language discrimination abilities: A meta-analysis
| Autor: | Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Loretta Gasparini, Sho Tsuji, Alan Langus |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Consonant
Accent discrimination Linguistics and Language Cognitive Neuroscience First language Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Language Development 050105 experimental psychology Language and Linguistics 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Rhythm Speech rhythm Infant speech perception Vowel Stress (linguistics) Developmental and Educational Psychology Humans Names Speech 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Language Language discrimination 05 social sciences Infant Newborn Infant Preference Interval (music) Meta-analysis Speech Perception Syllable Psychology Durational cues 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Cognitive psychology |
| Zdroj: | Cognition, 213:104757. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV |
| ISSN: | 0010-0277 |
| Popis: | More than 30 years have passed since Mehler et al. (1988) proposed that newborns can discriminate between languages that belong to different rhythm classes: stress-, syllable- or mora-timed. Thereupon they developed the hypothesis that infants are sensitive to differences in vowel and consonant interval durations as acoustic correlates of rhythm classes. It remains unknown exactly which durational computations infants use when perceiving speech for the purposes of distinguishing languages. Here, a meta-analysis of studies on infants' language discrimination skills over the first year of life was conducted, aiming to quantify how language discrimination skills change with age and are modulated by rhythm classes or durational metrics. A systematic literature search identified 42 studies that tested infants' (birth to 12 months) discrimination or preference of two language varieties, by presenting infants with auditory or audio-visual continuous speech. Quantitative data synthesis was conducted using multivariate random effects meta-analytic models with the factors rhythm class difference, age, stimulus manipulation, method, and metrics operationalising proportions of and variability in vowel and consonant interval durations, to explore which factors best account for language discrimination or preference. Results revealed that smaller differences in vowel interval variability (△V) and larger differences in successive consonantal interval variability (rPVI-C) were associated with more successful language discrimination, and better accounted for discrimination results than the factor rhythm class. There were no effects of age for discrimination but results on preference studies were affected by age: the older infants get, the more they prefer non-native languages that are rhythmically similar to their native language, but not non-native languages that are rhythmically distinct. These findings can inform theories on language discrimination that have previously focussed on rhythm class, by providing a novel way to operationalise rhythm in language in the extent to which it accounts for infants' language discrimination abilities. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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