Dutch infants’ sensitivity to lexical tones under perceptual reorganization : a cross-sectional study

![CDATA[Previous studies show that infants undergo a perceptual reorganization (PR) in their sensitivity to lexical tones between 6 and 9 months in the first year of life [Mattock & Burnham, 1; Mattock, Molnar, Polka & Burnham, 2]. Also, it has been shown that Dutch infants aged 11-12 months can track distributional information of Mandarin high and falling tones from the ambient speech input [Liu & Kager, 3]. In order to establish the exact time window for tonal PR, the plasticity of PR, in particular the extent to which PR can be influenced by statistical learning, Dutch infants aged 5-6, 8-9 and 11-12 months were tested on the same tonal contrast as in the previous study. Results show that only infants aged 5-6 months but not older infants perceived the contrast. This not only proves the validity of the time window for tonal PR, but also underscores the plasticity of PR: with the “right” type of statistical exposure, infants can perceive non-native tonal contrasts even at 3 months after the offset of tonal PR.]]