title: Bilingual exposure influences infant VOT perception.
abstract: Linking the discrimination of voice onset time (VOT) in infancy with infant language background, we examine the perceptual changes of two VOT contrasts (/b/-/p/ and /p(h)/-/p/) by Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants from 8 to 15 months of age. Results showed that language exposure and language dominance had a strong impact on monolingual and bilingual infant VOT perceptual patterns. In addition, perceptual turbulence was found at 8-9 months for bilingual infants, and stabilized perception was presented for all infants from 11 months onwards. We thus report a general input-driven developmental VOT perception in both monolingual and bilingual infants, with perceptual turbulence for bilinguals in the second half of the first year of life.
authors.affiliation: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: l.liu@uu.nl.
authors.forename: Liquan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: r.w.j.kager@uu.nl.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kager
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception
keywords: Bilingualism; Infant speech perception; Language dominance; Perceptual tuning; Perceptual turbulence; Voice onset time