Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts.

By Linda Polka, Janet F. Werker. 1994

Subfields: Cognitive Science & Psychology

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Unsupervised Speech Recognition (2021, background): “On the other hand, humans learn a lot about speech simply by listening to others around them and without explicit supervision (Werker and Tees, 1984; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1987; Polka and Werker, 1994; Jusczyk et al., 1999; Johnson and Jusczyk, 2001).”
Early Experience & Multisensory Perceptual Narrowing (2014, background): “For example, as the inset in Figure 4 shows, the sensitive period for responsiveness to vowels closes earlier (Kuhl et al., 1992) than for consonants (Polka & Werker, 1994).”
When does native language input affect phonetic perception? The precocious case of lexical tone (2013, background): “…bars = std. errors, double asterisks = p < .01, and single asterisks = p < .05. when Vowel B is perceived in the context of Vowel A (Cowan & Morse, 1986; Kuhl, 1991; Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Polka & Bohn, 2003; Polka & Bohn, 2011; Polka & Werker, 1994; Repp, Healy, & Crowder, 1979).”
At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns (2012, background): “The large impact of these two items on the data was also found in the 6- to 9-mo-olds (Results); low performance for this item is in keeping with a shift in social-cognitive abilities occurring around 9 mo of age, after which infants are better attuned to follow eye gaze (1).”
Lessons for artificial intelligence from the study of natural stupidity (2019, background): “Categorical perception, which allows people to differentiate subtle perceptual categories, can come at the cost of being able to distinguish unfamiliar categories such as non-native-speech sounds 72,73 .”
Brief daily exposures to Asian females reverses perceptual narrowing for Asian faces in Caucasian infants (2012, unknown): “…auditory domain, perceptual narrowing is evident in infants’ better discriminatory abilities for native speech sounds over non-native speech sounds (Polka & Werker, 1994; Werker & Lalonde, 1988; Werker & Tees, 2002), different female voices speaking a native language over different female voices…”
Bilingual Language Acquisition (2011, background): “Initially, infants aged 4 months (and rhesus monkeys) make the discrimination on the basis of the objective distance between the referent and comparison stimuli [Polka & Werker, 1994].”
On the Learning of Arbitrary Phonological Rules (2005, background): “wanted infants who would be able to learn a new pattern, so we tested 8.5- to 9.5-month-olds because it has been shown that infants at this age are still able to learn some new phonological units; for example, they can still perceive some non-native phoneme contrasts ( Polka & Werker, 1994; Werker ”
PRIMIR: A Developmental Framework of Infant Speech Processing (2005, background): “Selective perception of language-specific information in vowels is evident at an even earlier age (Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Werker, 1994).”
Chinese and English Infants' Tone Perception: Evidence for Perceptual Reorganization (2006, background): “Moreover, the exact onset and offset of heightened perceptual sensitivity for tones cannot be determined here: To ascertain whether experiential influences on tone perception are evident as early as for vowel perception (Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Werker, 1994 ) or as late as for consonant percepti”
Infants' Ability to Learn Phonetically Similar Words: Effects of Age and Vocabulary Size (2002, background): “…consonant and vowel distinctions that have phonemic significance (are used to distinguish meaning) in their native language (Best, McRoberts, LaFleur, & Silver-Isenstadt, 1995; Pegg & Werker, 1997; Polka & Werker, 1994; Tsao, Liu, Kuhl, & Tseng, 2000; Werker & Lalonde, 1988; Werker & Tees, 1984).”
Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems of the brain. (2005, background): “The effect of auditory exposure may be apparent at an earlier age for vowels than for consonants (Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens, & Lindblom, 1992; Polka & Werker, 1994), perhaps because vowels are more acoustically salient.”
Psychological universals: what are they and how can we know? (2005, background): “Cultural experience can exert its effects from early infancy, perhaps even in the womb, as is the case for discriminating speech sounds (Mehler et al., 1988; Polka & Werker, 1994), and throughout adulthood.”
A typological study of stress ‘deafness’ (2002, background): “First, they acquire the segmental inventory between 6 and 12 months (Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens & Lindblom 1992; Polka & Werker 1994; Werker & Tees 1984a).”