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Constructing adequate non‐speech analogues: what is special about speech anyway?
Author(s) -
Rosen Stuart,
Iverson Paul
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00550.x
Subject(s) - preference , natural (archaeology) , psychology , cognitive psychology , speech recognition , communication , linguistics , computer science , history , philosophy , archaeology , economics , microeconomics
Vouloumanos and Werker (2007 ) claim that human neonates have a (possibly innate) bias to listen to speech based on a preference for natural speech utterances over sine‐wave analogues. We argue that this bias more likely arises from the strikingly different saliency of voice melody in the two kinds of sounds, a bias that has already been shown to be learned pre‐natally. Possible avenues of research to address this crucial issue are proposed, based on a consideration of the distinctive acoustic properties of speech.