婴儿语音感知发展及其机制

语音感知的发展状况对个体的语言发展有着深远影响。生命的第一年中, 在语言经验的作用下, 婴儿的语音感知从最初的普遍性感知逐渐发展为对母语的特异性感知。研究者们提出统计学习机制对这一过程加以解释, 即婴儿对语言环境中语音的频次分布十分敏感, 可以通过对频次分布的计算, 从语音的连续体中区分出在母语中起区别意义作用的各个语音范畴。同时, 功能性重组机制和一些社会性线索也会对婴儿语音感知的发展产生重要影响。

Infants' Speech Perception: The Development and Its Mechanisms

Development of speech perception profoundly influences individual’s language learning. In the first year of life, infants’ speech perception undergoes a drastic change under the influence of native language experience, which reveals the change from initial universal speech perception to the native specific perception. Statistical learning theory was proposed to address the underlying mechanisms of infants’ speech perception and its development. That is, infants in the language environment are very sensitive to the frequency distribution of the phonetic variation in the speech, and they can distinguish native phonetic units from the acoustic continuum by calculating the statistical distribution. Meanwhile, functional reorganization and some social cues also play an important role in the development of infants’ speech perception.