The major goals of the proposed research are to add to our knowledge of the capacities of young infants to perceive speech, to our understanding of the developing phonetic competence of young infants, and to a theory of speech perception by providing data bearing on the nature of the mechanisms that serve the perception of speech, that is, whether specialized for speech perception or general auditory processes, or both. More specifically, a series of experiments are planned with adult listeners that investigate the processes of integration (i.e., organization) of spatially separate sources of acoustic information, dichotically presented, that together form coherent linguistic units -- words in the case of adult listeners. These experiments are planned with the aim of describing the conditions under which integration occurs, that is, the conditions under which listeners treat information from different locations as the consequence of a single articulatory source. Additional experiments are planned that examine whether different linguistic units, segments as opposed to syllables, integrate more easily. In the same vein, experiments will test whether units that violate the presumed hierarchical structures of syllables affect processes of integration. Many of these experiments will be replicated with infants three and four months of age.
The aim i s to determine the breadth of the processes of integration and organization in the perception of speech by infants and whether these processes are influenced by the nature of the linguistic unit to be integrated. Evidence showing an effect of such units provides information about how speech is represented by infants and additional support for the contention that the acquisition of language, even in its earliest stages, is driven (in part) by processes of a linguistic nature. A second series of experiments with infants is proposed that will examine the structure of consonantal and vocalic categories in three- and four- month-old infants and in younger and older infants depending on the outcome of initial studies. Of particular concern is the age at which categorical structures can be demonstrated and whether these structures are determined by brief experience with various category exemplars. We are particularly interested in whether these structures are influenced by brief experience with nontypical exemplars. The existence of structures at an early age that are relatively insensitive to brief laboratory experience to various arrays of exemplars is compatible with the idea that both the categories of speech and their structures have a strong biological determination.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD005331-25
Application #
2194888
Study Section
Human Development and Aging Subcommittee 3 (HUD)
Project Start
1976-09-01
Project End
1997-11-30
Budget Start
1994-12-01
Budget End
1995-11-30
Support Year
25
Fiscal Year
1995
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Brown University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
001785542
City
Providence
State
RI
Country
United States
Zip Code
02912
Eimas, P D; Quinn, P C (1994) Studies on the formation of perceptually based basic-level categories in young infants. Child Dev 65:903-17
Eimas, P D (1994) Categorization in early infancy and the continuity of development. Cognition 50:83-93
Eimas, P D; Quinn, P C; Cowan, P (1994) Development of exclusivity in perceptually based categories of young infants. J Exp Child Psychol 58:418-31
LaGasse, L L (1993) Effects of good form and spatial frequency on global precedence. Percept Psychophys 53:89-105
Quinn, P C; Eimas, P D; Rosenkrantz, S L (1993) Evidence for representations of perceptually similar natural categories by 3-month-old and 4-month-old infants. Perception 22:463-75
Nygaard, L C (1993) Phonetic coherence in duplex perception: effects of acoustic differences and lexical status. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 19:268-86
Eimas, P D; Miller, J L (1991) A constraint on the discrimination of speech by young infants. Lang Speech 34 ( Pt 3):251-63
Nygaard, L C; Eimas, P D (1990) A new version of duplex perception: evidence for phonetic and nonphonetic fusion. J Acoust Soc Am 88:75-86
Clarkson, R L; Eimas, P D; Marean, G C (1989) Speech perception in children with histories of recurrent otitis media. J Acoust Soc Am 85:926-33
Eimas, P D; Galaburda, A M (1989) Some agenda items for a neurobiology of cognition: an introduction. Cognition 33:1-23

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