These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.
Pubmed for Handhelds
PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS
Search MEDLINE/PubMed
Title: The consonant bias in word learning is not determined by position within the word: Evidence from vowel-initial words. Author: Nazzi T, Polka L. Journal: J Exp Child Psychol; 2018 Oct; 174():103-111. PubMed ID: 29920448. Abstract: The current study used an object manipulation task to explore whether infants rely more on consonant information than on vowel information when learning new words even when the words start with a vowel. Canadian French-learning 20-month-olds, who were taught pairs of new vowel-initial words contrasted either on their initial vowel (opsi/eupsi) or following consonant (oupsa/outsa), were found to have learned the words only in the consonant condition and performed significantly better in the consonant condition than in the vowel condition. These results extend to Canadian French-learning infants the consonant bias in word learning previously found in French-learning infants from France and, crucially, shows that vocalic information has less weight than consonant information in new word learning even when it is the initial sound of the target words, confirming the consonant bias at the lexical level postulated by Nespor et al. (2003). The current findings also suggest that French-learning infants are able to segment vowel-initial words as early as 20 months of age.[Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]