Lexical Tone Perception In Infants And Young Children Empirical Studies And Theoretical Perspectives

In psycholinguistic research there has traditionally been a strong emphasis on understanding how particular language types of are processed and learned . In particular, Romance and Germanic languages (e.g. English, French, German) have, until recently, received more attention than other types, such as Chinese languages. This has led to selective emphasis on the phonological building blocks of European languages, consonants and vowels, to the exclusion of lexical tones which, like consonants and vowels, determine lexical meaning, but unlike consonants and vowels are based on pitch variations. Lexical tone is pervasive; it is used in at least half of the world’ languages (Maddieson, 2013), e.g., most Asian and some African, Central American, and European languages. This Research Topic brings together a collection of recent empirical research on the processing and representation of lexical tones across the lifespan with an emphasis on advancing knowledge on how tone systems are acquired. The articles focus on various aspects of tone: early perception of tones, influences of tone on word learning, the acquisition of new tone systems, and production of tones. One set of articles report on tone perception at the earliest stage of development, in infants learning either tone or non-tone languages. Tsao and Chen et al. demonstrate that infants’ sensitivity to Mandarin lexical tones, as well as pitch, improves over the first year of life in native and non-native learners in contrast to traditional accounts of perceptual narrowing for consonants and vowels. Götz et al. report a different pattern of perception for Cantonese tones and further demonstrate influences of methodological approaches on infants’ tone sensitivity. Fan et al. demonstrate that sensitivity to less well-studied properties of tone languages, such as neutral tone, may develop after the first year of life. Cheng and Lee ask a similar question in an electrophysiological study and report effects of stimulus salience on infants’ neural response to native tones. In a complementary set of studies focused on tone sensitivity in word learning, Burnham et al. demonstrate that infants bind tones to newly-learned words if they are learning a tone language, either monolingually or bilingually; although it was also found that object-word binding was influenced by the properties of individual tones. Liu and Kager chart a developmental trajectory over the second year of life in which infants narrow in their interpretation of non-native tones. Choi et al. investigate how learning a tone language can influence uptake of other suprasegmental properties of language, such as stress, and demonstrate that native tone sensitivity in children can facilitate stress sensitivity when learning a stress-based language. Finally, two studies focus on sensitivity to pitch in a sub-class tone languages: pitch accent languages. In a study on Japanese children’s abilities to recognise words they know, Ota et al. demonstrate a limited sensitivity to native pitch contrasts in toddlers. In contrast, Ramachers et al. demonstrate comparatively strong sensitivity to pitch in native and non-native speakers of a different pitch accent system (Limburghian) when learning new words. Several studies focus on learning new tone systems. In a training study with school-aged children, Kasisopa et al. demonstrate that tone language experience increases children’s abilities to learn new tone contrasts. Poltrock et al. demonstrate similar advantages of tone experience in learning new tone systems in adults. And in an elecrophysiological study, Liu et al. demonstrate order effects in adults’ neural responses to new tones, discussing implications for learning tone languages as an adult. Finally, Hannah et al. demonstrate that extralinguistic cues, such as facial expression, can support adults’ learning of new tone systems. In three studies investigating tone production, Rattansone et al. report the results of a study demonstrating kindergartners’ asynchronous mastery of tones – delayed acquisition of tone sandhi forms relative to base forms. In a study interrogating a corpus of adult tone production, Han et al. demonstrate that mothers produce tones in a distinct manner when speaking to infants; tone differences are emphasised more when speaking to infants than to adults. Combining perception and production of tones, Wong et al. report asynchronous development of tone perception and tone production in children. The Research Topic also includes a series of Opinion pieces and Commentaries addressing the broader relevance of tone and pitch to the study of language acquisition. Curtin and Werker discuss ways in which tone can be integrated into their model of infant language development (PRIMIR). Best discusses the phonological status of lexical tones and considers how recent empirical research on tone perception bears on this question. Kager focuses on how language learners distinguish lexical tones from other sources of pitch variation (e.g., affective and pragmatic) that also inform language comprehension. Finally, Antoniou and Chin unite evidence of tone sensitivity from children and adults and discuss how these areas of research can be mutually informative. Psycholinguistic studies of lexical tone acquisition have burgeoned over the past 13 years. This collection of empirical studies and opinion pieces provides a state-of-the-art panoply of the psycholinguistic study of lexical tones, and demonstrate its coming of age. The articles in this Research Topic will help address the hitherto Eurocentric non-tone language research emphasis, and will contribute to an expanding narrative of speech perception, speech production, and language acquisition that includes all of the world’s languages. Importantly, these studies underline the scientific promise of drawing from tone languages in psycholinguistic research; the research questions raised by lexical tone are unique and distinct from those typically applied to more widely studied languages and populations. The comprehensive study of language acquisition can only benefit from this expanded focus.

Whether or not infants' earliest perception of the world is a "blooming, buzzing, confusion," it is not long before they come to perceive structure and order among the objects and events around them. At the core of this process, and cognitive development in general, is the ability to categorize--to group events, objects, or properties together--and to form mental representations, or concepts, that encapsulate the commonalities and structure of these categories. Categorization is the primary means of coding experience, underlying not only perceptual and reasoning processes, but also inductive inference and language. The aim of this book is to bring together the most recent findings and theories about the origins and early development of categorization and conceptual abilities. Despite recent advances in our understanding of this area, a number of hotly debated issues remain at the center of the controversy over categorization. Researchers continue to ask questions such as: Which mechanisms for categorization are available at birth and which emerge later? What are the relative roles of perceptual similarity and nonobservable properties in early classification? What is the role of contextual variation in categorization by infants and children? Do different experimental procedures reveal the same kind of knowledge? Can computational models simulate infant and child categorization? How do computational models inform behavioral research? What is the impact of language on category development? How does language partition the world? This book is the first to address these and other key questions within a single volume. The authors present a diverse set of views representing cutting-edge empirical and theoretical advances in the field. The result is a thorough review of empirical contributions to the literature, and a wealth of fresh theoretical perspectives on early categorization.

Early Word Learning explores the processes leading to a young child learning words and their meanings. Word learning is here understood as the outcome of overlapping and interacting processes, starting with an infant’s learning of native speech sounds to segmenting proto-words from fluent speech, mapping individual words to meanings in the face of natural variability and uncertainty, and developing a structured mental lexicon. Experts in the field review the development of early lexical acquisition from empirical, computational and theoretical perspectives to examine the development of skilled word learning as the outcome of a process that begins even before birth and spans the first two years of life. Drawing on cutting-edge research in infant eye-tracking, neuroimaging techniques and computational modelling, this book surveys the field covering both established results and the most recent advances in word learning research. Featuring chapters from international experts whose research approaches the topic from these diverse perspectives using different methodologies, this book provides a comprehensive yet coherent and unified representation of early word learning. It will be invaluable for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in early language development as well as being of interest to researchers interested in lexical development.

This book addresses important issues of speech processing and language learning in Chinese. It highlights perception and production of speech in healthy and clinical populations and in children and adults. This book provides diverse perspectives and reviews of cutting-edge research in past decades on how Chinese speech is processed and learned. Along with each chapter, future research directions have been discussed. With these unique features and the broad coverage of topics, this book appeals to not only scholars and students who study speech perception in preverbal infants and in children and adults learning Chinese, but also to teachers with interests in pedagogical applications in teaching Chinese as Second Language.

In this important volume, Lois Bloom brings together the theoretical and empirical work she has carried out on early lexical development. Its focus is on the expressive power children acquire as they begin to talk and, in particular, on contributions from cognitive development, affect expression, and the social context for making the transition from prelinguistic expression to the expression of contents of mind. The first half of the book reviews the developments in infancy that enable the emergence of language and presents the theoretical perspective required for an understanding of the longitudinal study described in the second half. The book's main thesis is that language is acquired for expressing contents of mind and that its usefulness as a 'tool' is of only secondary importance. The Transition from Infancy to Language makes a major contribution to our knowledge of early lexical development, providing a persuasive theoretical model for researchers and students.

Prosody is one of the core components of language and speech, indicating information about syntax, turn-taking in conversation, types of utterances, such as questions or statements, as well as speakers' attitudes and feelings. This edited volume takes studies in prosody on Asian languages as well as examples from other languages. It brings together the most recent research in the field and also charts the influence on such diverse fields as multimedia communication and SLA. Intended for a wide audience of linguists that includes neighbouring disciplines such as computational sciences, psycholinguists, and specialists in language acquisition, Prosodic Studies is also ideal for scholars and researchers working in intonation who want a complement of information on specifics.

The developing infant can accomplish all important perceptual tasks that an adult can, albeit with less skill or precision. Through infant perception research, infant responses to experiences enable researchers to reveal perceptual competence, test hypotheses about processes, and infer neural mechanisms, and researchers are able to address age-old questions about perception and the origins of knowledge. In Development of Perception in Infancy: The Cradle of Knowledge Revisited, Martha E. Arterberry and Philip J. Kellman study the methods and data of scientific research on infant perception, introducing and analyzing topics (such as space, pattern, object, and motion perception) through philosophical, theoretical, and historical contexts. Infant perception research is placed in a philosophical context by addressing the abilities with which humans appear to be born, those that appear to emerge due to experience, and the interaction of the two. The theoretical perspective is informed by the ecological tradition, and from such a perspective the authors focus on the information available for perception, when it is used by the developing infant, the fit between infant capabilities and environmental demands, and the role of perceptual learning. Since the original publication of this book in 1998 (MIT), Arterberry and Kellman address in addition the mechanisms of change, placing the basic capacities of infants at different ages and exploring what it is that infants do with this information. Significantly, the authors feature the perceptual underpinnings of social and cognitive development, and consider two examples of atypical development - congenital cataracts and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Professionals and students alike will find this book a critical resource to understanding perception, cognitive development, social development, infancy, and developmental cognitive neuroscience, as research on the origins of perception has changed forever our conceptions of how human mental life begins.