Abstract:
The ability to detect word contrasts embedded in natural sentences was studied with 62 Swedish infants whose ages ranged from 48 to 147 days, using the high-amplitude sucking (HAS) technique. The infants listened to one of four possible pairs of natural carrier sentences, produced as child-directed speech, in which a target word was inserted: (1) a pair of sentences in which the contrasting target words was inserted in focal position; (2) a pair of sentences in which the target words were out of the sentence focus; (3) a pair of sentences that differed only in the position of the sentence focus; and (4) a control pair with two identical sentences. When this group of subjects is divided into two age groups, one below and the other above the median age for all the subjects, a pattern of interaction between the age groups and the experimental conditions is observed suggesting that word discrimination capacity in the younger infants may be disrupted by dominant F0 variations. For the older group, a tendency to attend to the word contrasts delivered in focal position seems to start to emerge. [Research supported by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, Grant No. 94-0435.]