AUTHOR=Thiessen Erik D., Erickson Lucy C.

TITLE=Discovering Words in Fluent Speech: The Contribution of Two Kinds of Statistical Information

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2012

YEAR=2013

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00590

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00590

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=To efficiently segment fluent speech, infants must discover the predominant phonological form of words in the native language.  In English, for example, content words typically begin with a stressed syllable.  To discover this regularity, infants need to identify a set of words.  We propose that statistical learning plays two roles in this process.  First, it provides a cue that allows infants to segment words from fluent speech, even without language-specific phonological knowledge.  Second, once infants have identified a set of lexical forms, they can learn from the distribution of acoustic features across those word forms.  The current experiments demonstrate both processes are available to 5-month-old infants.  This is an earlier age than prior demonstration of sensitivity to statistical structure in speech, and consistent with theoretical accounts that claim statistical learning plays a role in helping infants to adapt to the structure of their native language from very early in life.