Used data from infants in operant head-turning procedure to examine effects of structure and redundancy of speech context on discovery of two target syllables. Clustering strategy, which presupposes basic element of perception and aggregates these elements to form units, may complement bracketing strategy, which presupposes endpoint cues and…

Examined the effect of functional values of stimuli on orienting response elicitation. Subjects were 50 4-month-old infants and were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions. Results suggested the importance of taking into account the functional value of stimuli when analyzing infant attention. (MOK)

Discusses the nature of speech perceptual capacities that infants possess, changes that come about with increased exposure to language, how growing understanding of native-language sound organization is used in developing word-segmentation strategies, and how developing word-segmentation abilities may facilitate discovery of grammatical…