Asymmetries in Infants' Vowel Perception: Changes in Vowel Discrimination in German Learning 6- and 9-Month-Old Infants.
Antonia Götz, Anna Krasotkina, Gudrun Schwarzer and 1 others
PMID 38373880WHAT IT FOUND
German-learning infants discriminated the vowels at 6 months in both directions.
At 9 months, they noticed the change only from the Polish vowel to the German vowel, not the reverse.
Key findings
016-month-old infants listened longer to the novel vowel than to the habituated vowel after habituation with either vowel and showed no asymmetrical vowel perception.
029-month-old infants listened longer to the novel vowel only after habituation with /ɨ/, not after habituation with /ɪ/.
03The response to the novel vowel depended on age and on which vowel was presented during habituation.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study tested only German-learning infants and did not include a native Polish-learning infant group, so it cannot separate language experience from acoustic properties of the vowels. The infants were typically developing, full-term, and had no hearing deficits, so the results do not show how infants with hearing loss or developmental disorders would perform. Only infants who reached the habituation criterion were analysed, and 21 additional infants were excluded, so some infants could not complete the task. The study compared different infants at 6 and 9 months rather than following the same infants over time. The task measured listening time to vowel changes, not speech production, language development, or clinical outcomes.
Declared interests
The article reports funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of Research Unit Crossing the Borders (FOR 2253), with grants to GS and BH. It does not report additional conflict-of-interest statements.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use this task to judge an infant's speech or language ability. The study tested typically developing German-learning infants on similar vowels in a listening-time lab task, and it did not measure speech production, communication, or clinical outcomes.