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Categorization of infant‐directed speech: Development from 4 to 6 months
Author(s) -
Spence Melanie J.,
Moore David S.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.10093
Subject(s) - categorization , psychology , utterance , security token , language development , developmental psychology , speech recognition , linguistics , computer science , philosophy , computer security
To extend a previous finding that 6‐month‐old infants categorized low‐pass filtered infant‐directed (ID) utterances, we examined a) 6‐month‐old infants' categorization of more naturalistic, unfiltered ID utterances and b) the developmental progression of ID‐speech categorization. In Experiment 1, 6‐month‐olds heard seven different unfiltered tokens from one class of ID utterance (approving or comforting), followed by a novel token from either the same or an unfamiliar category. Infants recovered, responding only to the unfamiliar category token, suggesting that they categorized naturalistic ID utterances. Four‐month‐olds' categorization of filtered and unfiltered versions of the ID utterances was assessed in Experiments 2 and 4. Four‐month‐olds did not recover, responding to a test token from an unfamiliar class, suggesting that they did not categorize either filtered or unfiltered ID utterances. Experiment 3 demonstrated that 4‐month‐old infants' failure to categorize did not result from their inability to complete the procedure. These results suggest that infants' processing of ID speech changes from 4 to 6 months of age. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 42: 97–109, 2003.