Lou Ann Gerken|Walter D. Murphy|Richard ?. Aslin
Three- and four-year-olds’ perceptual confusions for spoken words
University at Buffalo, State University of New York|Vanderbilt University|University of Rochester
although infants ability discriminate variety speech contrasts young children cannot always use ability service spokenword recognition research reported asked whether reason young children sometimes fail discriminate minimal word pairs less efficient word recognition adults whether employ different lexical representations particular research evaluated proposal young childrens lexical representations holistic adults based overall acousticphonetic properties opposed phonetic segments three fouryearolds exposed initially invariant target word subsequently asked determine whether series auditory stimuli matched match target critical test stimuli nonwords varied degree phonetic featural overlap target well terms positions within stimuli differed target whether differed target one two segments data four experiments demonstrated frequency children mistook nonword stimulus target influenced extent featural overlap word position data also showed contrary predictions holistic hypothesis stimuli differing target two features single segment confused target often stimuli differing single feature two segments finding suggests children use phonetic features segments accessing mental lexicons therefore much similar adults suggested holistic hypothesis