Infants' discrimination of intensity variation in multisyllabic stimuli.
Two groups of 5- to 11-month-old infants were tested for their ability to discriminate within-utterance intensity variations similar to those associated with linguistic stress. A visually reinforced discrimination procedure was used to determine sensitivity to increments in peak intensity for a final position, synthetic CVC syllable within either a bisyllabic (CVCVC) or a trisyllablic (CVCVCVC) context. Discrimination performance was above chance for a 2-dB increment, and improved for 4- and 6-dB increments. In addition, infants were more sensitive to intensity increments in the bisyllablic as compared to the trisyllabic context. Infant sensitivity for within-utterance intensity variations is sufficient for the detection of some linguistic stress contrasts.
D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008144:Loudness Perception; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception