title: Call me Alix, not Elix: vowels are more important than consonants in own-name recognition at 5 months.
abstract: Consonants and vowels differ acoustically and articulatorily, but also functionally: Consonants are more relevant for lexical processing, and vowels for prosodic/syntactic processing. These functional biases could be powerful bootstrapping mechanisms for learning language, but their developmental origin remains unclear. The relative importance of consonants and vowels at the onset of lexical acquisition was assessed in French-learning 5-month-olds by testing sensitivity to minimal phonetic changes in their own name. Infants' reactions to mispronunciations revealed sensitivity to vowel but not consonant changes. Vowels were also more salient (on duration and intensity) but less distinct (on spectrally based measures) than consonants. Lastly, vowel (but not consonant) mispronunciation detection was modulated by acoustic factors, in particular spectrally based distance. These results establish that consonant changes do not affect lexical recognition at 5 months, while vowel changes do; the consonant bias observed later in development does not emerge until after 5 months through additional language exposure.
authors.affiliation: Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, France.|CNRS - Laboratoire de Psychologie de la Perception (UMR 8242), Paris, France.
authors.forename: Camillia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bouchon
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Plymouth University, UK.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Floccia
authors.affiliation: CNRS - Laboratoire de Phonétique et de Phonologie (UMR 7018), Paris, France.
authors.forename: Thibaut
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fux
authors.affiliation: CNRS - Laboratoire de Phonétique et de Phonologie (UMR 7018), Paris, France.
authors.forename: Martine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Adda-Decker
authors.affiliation: Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, France.|CNRS - Laboratoire de Psychologie de la Perception (UMR 8242), Paris, France.
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nazzi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009275:Names; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*