title: The effect of listening experience on the discrimination of /ba/ and /pa/ in Hebrew-learning and Arabic-learning infants.
abstract: Infant speech discrimination can follow multiple trajectories depending on the language and the specific phonemes involved. Two understudied languages in terms of the development of infants' speech discrimination are Arabic and Hebrew.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of listening experience with the native language on the discrimination of the voicing contrast /ba-pa/ in Arabic-learning infants whose native language includes only the phoneme /b/ and in Hebrew-learning infants whose native language includes both phonemes.
  
  
  METHODS
  128 Arabic-learning infants and Hebrew-learning infants, 4-to-6 and 10-to-12-month-old infants, were tested with the Visual Habituation Procedure.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results showed that 4-to-6-month-old infants discriminated between /ba-pa/ regardless of their native language and order of presentation. However, only 10-to-12-month-old infants learning Hebrew retained this ability. 10-to-12-month-old infants learning Arabic did not discriminate the change from /ba/ to /pa/ but showed a tendency for discriminating the change from /pa/ to /ba/.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This is the first study to report on the reduced discrimination of /ba-pa/ in older infants learning Arabic. Our findings are consistent with the notion that experience with the native language changes discrimination abilities and alters sensitivity to non-native contrasts, thus providing evidence for 'top-down' processing in young infants. The directional asymmetry in older infants learning Arabic can be explained by assimilation of the non-native consonant /p/ to the native Arabic category /b/ as predicted by current speech perception models.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Disorders, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Electronic address: segalll@netvision.net.il.
authors.forename: Osnat
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Segal
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Disorders, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
authors.forename: Saja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hejli-Assi
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Disorders, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
authors.forename: Liat
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kishon-Rabin
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D008085:Lipreading; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014831:Voice
keywords: Arabic and Hebrew-learning infants; Discrimination of voicing contrast; Language development; Listening experience; Native and non-native contrasts; Speech perception in infants