Article: Separating the Wheat From the Chaff

EARLY SPEECH PERCEPTION

Best et al. (2009). Development of phonological constancy: Toddlers' perception of native- and Jamaican-accented words. Psychol Sci, 20, 539.

As children begin to acquire a spoken language, such as English, they must learn which differences in pronunciation matter, and which don't, in order to understand spoken words. Differences in dialects and accents, in particular, can significantly change the way spoken words are produced, and children must undercover what properties make a word a word, whether in London or Boise. Best et al. found that this type of perceptual constancy for phonological word forms appears to emerge as a function of development. In a ...

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