A series of experiments is proposed to investigate the basic speech perception capacities of infants and the role of these capacities in acquiring a native language. During the course of development, speech-processing capacities become adapted to the specific organization of native language sound patterns to provide fast and efficient recognition of words in fluent speech. Accordingly, one aim of the proposed research is to develop a clearer picture of the speech information that infants encode and remember. A fuller account of infants' memory capacities for speech is required to understand processes underlying word learning and the development of a lexicon. A number of the proposed studies examine the nature and extent of information that infants retain about speech and the implications this has for the growth and organization of a lexicon. The investigator has been exploring infants' use of their growing knowledge of native language sounds patterns to segment words from fluent speech. Thus, a second aim is to identify potential cues to word boundaries used by infants in processing fluent speech and to investigate how and when infants integrate the various cues that are available to them. A clearer picture of the nature of the words that infants detect and encode from fluent speech will be useful in understanding how they begin to discover the syntactic organization of native language utterances. For example, sensitivity to the occurrence of positioning of certain grammatical morphemes in utterances could provide the learner with clues about syntactic organization. Previous research from this laboratory has shown that infants are sensitive to the prosodic marking of utterances. Thus, a third major aim of the proposed research how this sensitivity to prosody might be used with other information in the speech signal, such as the occurrence of grammatical morphemes to aid learners in the discovery of the syntactic organization of their native language.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01HD015795-21
Application #
2906773
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-CMS (02))
Program Officer
Mccardle, Peggy D
Project Start
1996-08-16
Project End
2005-03-31
Budget Start
2000-05-09
Budget End
2001-03-31
Support Year
21
Fiscal Year
2000
Total Cost
$366,573
Indirect Cost
Name
Johns Hopkins University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
045911138
City
Baltimore
State
MD
Country
United States
Zip Code
21218
Mattys, S L; Jusczyk, P W; Luce, P A et al. (1999) Phonotactic and prosodic effects on word segmentation in infants. Cogn Psychol 38:465-94
Jusczyk, P W; Johnson, S P; Spelke, E S et al. (1999) Synchronous change and perception of object unity: evidence from adults and infants. Cognition 71:257-88
Jusczyk, P W; Aslin, R N (1995) Infants' detection of the sound patterns of words in fluent speech. Cogn Psychol 29:1-23
Hohne, E A; Jusczyk, P W (1994) Two-month-old infants' sensitivity to allophonic differences. Percept Psychophys 56:613-23
Gerken, L; Jusczyk, P W; Mandel, D R (1994) When prosody fails to cue syntactic structure: 9-month-olds' sensitivity to phonological versus syntactic phrases. Cognition 51:237-65
Mandel, D R; Jusczyk, P W; Nelson, D G (1994) Does sentential prosody help infants organize and remember speech information? Cognition 53:155-80
Jusczyk, P W; Cutler, A; Redanz, N J (1993) Infants' preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. Child Dev 64:675-87
Jusczyk, P W; Hirsh-Pasek, K; Nelson, D G et al. (1992) Perception of acoustic correlates of major phrasal units by young infants. Cogn Psychol 24:252-93
Jusczyk, P W; Pisoni, D B; Mullennix, J (1992) Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants. Cognition 43:253-91
Reed, M A (1989) Speech perception and the discrimination of brief auditory cues in reading disabled children. J Exp Child Psychol 48:270-92

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