title: Infants Discriminate Voicing and Place of Articulation With Reduced Spectral and Temporal Modulation Cues.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study assessed the role of spectro-temporal modulation cues in the discrimination of 2 phonetic contrasts (voicing and place) for young infants.
  
  
  METHODS
  A visual-habituation procedure was used to assess the ability of French-learning 6-month-old infants with normal hearing to discriminate voiced versus unvoiced (/aba/-/apa/) and labial versus dental (/aba/-/ada/) stop consonants. The stimuli were processed by tone-excited vocoders to degrade frequency-modulation cues while preserving: (a) amplitude-modulation (AM) cues within 32 analysis frequency bands, (b) slow AM cues only (<16 Hz) within 32 bands, and (c) AM cues within 8 bands.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Infants exhibited discrimination responses for both phonetic contrasts in each processing condition. However, when fast AM cues were degraded, infants required a longer exposure to vocoded stimuli to reach the habituation criterion.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Altogether, these results indicate that the processing of modulation cues conveying phonetic information on voicing and place is "functional" at 6 months. The data also suggest that the perceptual weight of fast AM speech cues may change during development.
authors: Laurianne
authors: L
authors: Cabrera
authors: Christian
authors: C
authors: Lorenzi
authors: Josiane
authors: J
authors: Bertoncini
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011581:Psychological Tests; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors