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  • Title: A sensitive period for shibboleths: the long tail and changing goals of speech perception over the course of development.
    Author: Zevin JD.
    Journal: Dev Psychobiol; 2012 Sep; 54(6):632-42. PubMed ID: 22714710.
    Abstract:
    It is clear that the ability to learn new speech contrasts changes over development, such that learning to categorize speech sounds as native speakers of a language do is more difficult in adulthood than it is earlier in development. There is also a wealth of data concerning changes in the perception of speech sounds during infancy, such that infants quite rapidly progress from language-general to more language-specific perceptual biases. It is often suggested that the perceptual narrowing observed during infancy plays a causal role in the loss of plasticity observed in adulthood, but the relationship between these two phenomena is complicated. Here I consider the relationship between changes in sensitivity to speech sound categorization over the first 2 years of life, when they appear to reorganize quite rapidly, to the "long tail" of development throughout childhood, in the context of understanding the sensitive period for speech perception.
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