although children perceive rhythmic patterns in their native language at 7–8 months, they are not able to reliably distinguish compound words and phrases that differ only in stress placement, such as ‘hot dog’ vs. ‘hot dog’ until around 12 years of age. children in a study by vogel and raimy (2002) were asked to show which of two pictures (i.e., a dog or a sausage) was being named. children younger than 12 years generally preferred the compound reading (i.e., the sausage) to the phrasal reading (the dog). the authors concluded from this that children start out with a lexical bias, i.e., they prefer to interpret phrases like these as single words, and the ability to override this bias develops until late in childhood.