To understand spoken words, listeners must appropriately interpret co-occurring talker characteristics and speech sound content. This ability was tested in 6- to 14-months-olds by measuring their looking to named food and body part images. In the "new talker" condition (n = 90), pictures were named by an unfamiliar voice; in the…

All languages employ certain phonetic contrasts when distinguishing words. Infant speech perception is rapidly attuned to these contrasts before many words are learned, thus phonetic attunement is thought to proceed independently of lexical and referential knowledge. Here, evidence to the contrary is provided. Ninety-eight 9-month-old…

Vowels with extreme articulatory-acoustic properties act as natural referents. Infant perceptual asymmetries point to an underlying bias favoring these referent vowels. However, as language experience is gathered, distributional frequency of speech sounds could modify this initial bias. The perception of the /i/-/e/ contrast was explored in 144…

In two experiments, examines discrimination of voice onset time (VOT) by 6- to 12-month-old infants. An operant head-turning technique assessed discrimination along a synthetic VOT continuum ranging from -70msec. to +70msec. (Author/RH)

Two experiments investigated infants' perception of silence in the speech contrast between the words "slit" and "split." Experiment I was designed to determine whether infants could discriminate a speech contrast cued primarily by silence duration. Experiment II studied whether infants can discriminate brief durations of…

Infants were tested for their discrimination of changes in the melodic contour (direction of successive pitch changes) of brief melodies in the context of discernible variations in key or interval size. (PCB)

Infants in more alert states demonstrated significantly higher rates of sucking following sound change. Treating state as a dependent variable revealed that state was not significantly affected by a change in stimulus conditions. (RH)

Investigated the possibility that evidence of frequency discrimination might be found when the experimental procedures involved the conjugate reinforcement of nonnutritive sucking. (SDH)

Discrepancy between angl head turn and loudspeaker location was measured on infants in auditory-alone and auditory-visual trials. Age and loudspeaker location had no effect on performance in auditory-visual trials. However, in auditory-alone trials, there were significant age differences. (PCB)

Uses a nonsimultaneous pulsation threshold technique to examine the development of frequency resolutions in infants of three to six months. (PCB)

The effectiveness of continuous stimulation in lowering arousal level, as indexed by state and heart rate, was studied in 30 uncircumcised males, 30 circumcised males, and 30 female subjects. The continuous-stimulation effect was shown to be directly related to auditory stimulus intensity. (Author/CS)

Examines the relation between aspects of the fundamental frequency (basic pitch) of 16 infant newborn cries and 28 multiparous mothers' perceptions of those cries. Results support the hypothesis that increases in fundamental frequency are related to increases in maternal perceptions of the intensity of the infant's cry. (Author/RWB)

Studies development of auditory temporal acuity in 56 children aged 6 to 12 years and in 8 adults. Improvement in temporal acuity with age was attributed to development of sensory processes and not to age-related changes in nonsensory factors. (Author/BE)

Determines whether an averaged evoked potential technique using a random-v-repetitive presentation mode could be used to study infant auditory discrimination. Results showed a main effect of presentation mode with shorter latency for random v repetitive. The shortest onset latency was for random stimulus at the fast rate. (Author/DB)