Object labeling influences infant phonetic learning and generalization

Different kinds of speech sounds are used to signify possible word forms in every language. For example, lexical stress is used in Spanish (/‘be.be/, ‘he/she drinks’ versus /be.’be/, ‘baby’), but not in French (/‘be.be/ and /be.’be/ both mean ‘baby’). Infants learn many such native language phonetic contrasts in their first year of life, likely using a number of cues from parental speech input. One such cue could be parents’ object labeling, which can explicitly highlight relevant contrasts. Here we ask whether phonetic learning from object labeling is abstract—that is, if learning can generalize to new phonetic contexts. We investigate this issue in the prosodic domain, as the abstraction of prosodic cues (like lexical stress) has been shown to be particularly difficult. One group of 10-month-old French-learners was given consistent word labels that contrasted on lexical stress (e.g., Object A was labeled /‘ma.bu/, and Object B was labeled /ma.’bu/). Another group of 10-month-olds was given inconsistent word labels (i.e., mixed pairings), and stress discrimination in both groups was measured in a test phase with words made up of new syllables. Infants trained with consistently contrastive labels showed an earlier effect of discrimination compared to infants trained with inconsistent labels. Results indicate that phonetic learning from object labeling can indeed generalize, and suggest one way infants may learn the sound properties of their native language(s).     

Speaking two languages at once: Unconscious native word form access in second language production

Bilingualism research has established language non-selective lexical access in comprehension. However, the evidence for such an effect in production remains sparse and its neural time-course has not yet been investigated. We demonstrate that German-English bilinguals performing a simple picture-naming task exclusively in English spontaneously access the phonological form of –unproduced– German words. Participants were asked to produce English adjective-noun sequences describing the colour and identity of familiar objects presented as line drawings. We associated adjective and picture names such that their onsets phonologically overlapped in English (e.g., green goat), in German through translation (e.g., blue flower – ‘blaue Blume’), or in neither language. As expected, phonological priming in English modulated event-related brain potentials over the frontocentral scalp region from around 440 ms after picture onset. Phonological priming in German was detectable even earlier, from 300 ms, even though German was never produced and in the absence of an interaction between language and phonological repetition priming at any point in time. Overall, these results establish the existence of non-selective access to phonological representations of the two languages in the domain of speech production.     

Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes

http://implicit.harvard.edu/ was created to provide experience with the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a procedure designed to measure social knowledge that may operate outside awareness or control. Significant by-products of the website's existence are large datasets contributed to by the site's many visitors. This article summarises data from more than 2.5 million completed IATs and self-reports across 17 topics obtained between July 2000 and May 2006. In addition to reinforcing several published findings with a heterogeneous sample, the data help to establish that: (a) implicit preferences and stereotypes are pervasive across demographic groups and topics, (b) as with self-report, there is substantial inter-individual variability in implicit attitudes and stereotypes, (c) variations in gender, ethnicity, age, and political orientation predict variation in implicit and explicit measures, and (d) implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes are related, but distinct.     

Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants

There is converging evidence that infants are sensitive to prosodic cues from birth onwards and use this kind of information in their earliest steps into the acquisition of words and syntactic regularities of their target language. Regarding word segmentation, it has been found that English-learning infants segment trochaic words by 7.5 months of age, and iambic words only by 10.5 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Houston, D. M., & Newsome, M. (1999). The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology, 39, 159–207]. The question remains how to interpret this finding in relation to results showing that English-learning infants develop a preference for trochaic over iambic words between 6 and 9 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A., & Redanz, N. (1993). Preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. Child Development, 64, 675–687]. In the following, we report the results of four experiments using the headturn preference procedure (HPP) to explore the trochaic bias issue in German- and French-learning infants. For German, a trochaic preference was found at 6 but not at 4 months, suggesting an emergence of this preference between both ages (Experiments 1 and 2). For French, 6-month-old infants did not show a preference for either stress pattern (Experiment 3) while they were found to discriminate between the two stress patterns (Experiment 4). Our findings are the first to demonstrate that the trochaic bias is acquired by 6 months of age, is language specific and can be predicted by the rhythmic properties of the language in acquisition. We discuss the implications of this very early acquisition for our understanding of the emergence of segmentation abilities.     

The impact of artistic awakening and education on the young

Art is both a motor for the development of children, and an extraordinary means of communication. More time must be given to art in schools, through the increased training of teachers and by rebalancing the pace of teaching.