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- Title
Continuous Vowel Discrimination in Normal and At Risk Infants.
- Authors
Swoboda, Philip J.; Morse, Philip A.; Leavitt, Lewis A.
- Abstract
The present study investigated vowel discrimination in 8-week-old infants using a nonnutritive, high-amplitude sucking measure in a habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Infants were presented with pairs of vowel stimuli differing In equal logarithmic steps along the /i/ to /I/ continuum. Stimulus pairs of equal acoustic differences were selected to be either within or between the adult phonetic categories. Infants were divided into 3 experimental stimulus shift conditions: within category, between category, and control. Using a scoring system to assess perinatal events, half the infants in each condition were categorized as being at "higher risk" for develop- mental problems. As evidenced by changes in high-amplitude sucking following stimulus shift, significant differences (p <.05) were found between the control and both the within and between phonetic category conditions, No effects due to risk score population differences proved to be significant. These results indicate that 8-week-old infants discriminate the vowels /i/ and /I/ in a continuous as opposed to a categorical manner. Some differences were noted in response patterns between high- and low-risk score infants.
- Subjects
INFANT psychology; STIMULUS intensity; VOWELS; PHONETIC alphabet; PERCEPTION in children; COGNITION in children
- Publication
Child Development, 1976, Vol 47, Issue 2, p459
- ISSN
0009-3920
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/1128802