The Role of experience in perceptual reorganization : the case of bilingual infants
Newborns are able to perceive sound of many languages. However, throughout their first year of life, both biological maturation and language exposure attune infants’ perceptual systems to the characteristics of their native phonetic repertoire(s). After perceptual reorganization such initial sensiti...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2016 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/383054 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/383054 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Bilingualism Development Language Phonetic acquisition Speech production Bilingüismo Desarrollo Lenguaje Adquisición fonética Producción del habla 81 |
| Sumario: | Newborns are able to perceive sound of many languages. However, throughout their first year of life, both biological maturation and language exposure attune infants’ perceptual systems to the characteristics of their native phonetic repertoire(s). After perceptual reorganization such initial sensitivities are either lost, maintained or sharpened. In order to assess how much and what kind of exposure drives phoneme acquisition, we compared monolingual and bilingual infants from 7 to 18 months on discrimination of nonnative contrasts and on consonant production. First, our results show that bilingual infants maintain the capacity to discriminate nonnative consonants for 6 additional months compared to monolinguals. Second, enhanced discrimination correlates with higher babbling rates and more accurate consonant productions in bilinguals. Third, the degree of bilingualism predicts these results at specific stages in development. Our findings open a new set of interpretations regarding the role of linguistic experience, attention and maturation in perceptual reorganization. |
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