Development of word recognition across speakers and accents

Karen E. Mulak, Catherine T. Best

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    13 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The pronunciation of a given word can contain considerable phonetic variation both within and between speakers, affects, and accents. For reliable word recognition, children must team to hear through the variation that does not change a word's identity, while still discerning variation that does not belong to a given word's identity. This requires knowledge of phonologically specified word invariants above the level of phonemic specification. Reviewing developmental accounts and empirical evidence, this chapter discusses the emergence of children's ability to attend to speaker- and accent-independent invariants. The authars focus particularly on changes between the ages of 7.5-10.5 months, where evidence points to a developing ability to recognize speech across within-speaker and "'!ithin-group variation, and 14-19 months, where increasing evidence suggests a shift from phonetically to more phonologically specified word forms. They propose a framework that describes the attentionalshifts involved in this progression, with emphasis on methodological concerns surrounding the interpretation of existing research.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationTheoretical and Computational Models of Word Learning: Trends in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence
    EditorsLakshmi Gogate, George Hollich
    Place of PublicationU.S.A.
    PublisherInformation Science Reference
    Pages242-269
    Number of pages28
    ISBN (Electronic)9781466629745
    ISBN (Print)9781466629738
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2013

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