title: Development of non-native vowel discrimination: Improvement without exposure.
abstract: The present study tested Japanese 4.5- and 10-month old infants' ability to discriminate three German vowel pairs, none of which are contrastive in Japanese, using a visual habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Japanese adults' discrimination of the same pairs was also tested. The results revealed that Japanese 4.5-month old infants discriminated the German /bu:k/-/by:k/ contrast, but they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bi:k/-/be:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese 10-month old infants, on the other hand, discriminated the German /bi:k/-/be:k/ contrast, while they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bu:k/-/by:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese adults, in contrast, were highly accurate in their discrimination of all of the pairs. The results indicate that discrimination of non-native contrasts is not always easy even for young infants, and that their ability to discriminate non-native contrasts can improve with age even when they receive no exposure to a language in which the given contrast is phonemic.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Language Development, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wakoshi, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan; Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC. mazuka@brain.riken.jp.
authors.forename: Reiko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mazuka
authors.forename: Mihoko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hasegawa
authors.forename: Sho
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tsuji
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: German vowels; Japanese infants; language development; non-native vowels; perceptual narrowing