title: A constraint on the discrimination of speech by young infants.
abstract: Three- and four-month-old infants were tested on their ability to discriminate the third-formant transitions sufficient to signal the syllable-medial stops [t] and [k]. The stimulus patterns consisted of an initial fricative [s], 20 or 100 msec of silence, and the vowel [a], whose initial formant transitions were appropriate for [t] or [k]. Discrimination only occurred when the duration of silence was 100 msec. This constraint on discrimination is discussed in terms of a psychoacoustic explanation based on forward masking and in terms of the hypothesis that the processing of speech signals involves a species-specific system dedicated to deriving a phonetic message.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912.
authors.forename: P D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Eimas
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception