Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T21:39:04.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Perceptual beginnings to language acquisition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2018

Janet F. WERKER
Janet F. WERKER*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Janet F. Werker, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada. E-mail: jwerker@psych.ubc.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I present a selective review of research on speech perception development and its relation to reference, word learning, and other aspects of language acquisition, focusing on the empirical and theoretical contributions that have come from my laboratory over the years. Discussed are the biases infants have at birth for processing speech, the mechanisms by which universal speech perception becomes attuned to the properties of the native language, and the extent to which changing speech perception sensitivities contribute to language learning. These issues are reviewed from the perspective of both monolingual and bilingual learning infants. Two foci will distinguish this from my previous reviews: first and foremost is the extent to which contrastive meaning and referential intent are not just shaped by, but also shape, changing speech perception sensitivities, and second is the extent to which infant speech perception is multisensory and its implications for both theory and methodology.

Keywords

infancylanguage acquisitionmultisensoryphonetic developmentspeech perception
Type
Keynote Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , July 2018 , pp. 703 - 728
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Albareda-Castellot, B., Pons, F., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2011). The acquisition of phonetic categories in bilingual infants: New data from an anticipatory eye movement paradigm. Developmental Science, 14, 395–401.Google Scholar
Archer, S., Ference, J., & Curtin, S. (2014). Now you hear it: Fourteen-month-olds succeed at learning minimal pairs in stressed syllables. Journal of Cognition and Development, 15, 110–122.Google Scholar
Baker, S. A., Golinkoff, R. M., & Petitto, L. A. (2006). New insights into old puzzles from infants’ categorical discrimination of soundless phonetic units. Language Learning and Development, 2, 147–162.Google Scholar
Barton, D. (1980). Phonemic perception in children. In G. Yeni-Komshian, J. Kavanagh, & C. Ferguson (Eds.), Child phonology: Vol. 2. Perception. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2000). The ontogeny of phonological categories and the primacy of lexical learning in linguistic development. Child Development, 71, 240–249.Google Scholar
Begus, K., Gliga, T., & Southgate, V. (2016). Infants’ preferences for native speakers are associated with an expectation of information. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 12397–12402.Google Scholar
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2012). At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 3253–3258.Google Scholar
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (in press). Young Infants’ Word Comprehension Given An Unfamiliar Talker or Altered Pronunciations. Child Development.Google Scholar
Bernard, C., & Gervain, J. (2012). Prosodic cues to word order: What level of representation? Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 85–90.Google Scholar
Bernhardt, B. M., Kemp, N., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Early word-object associations and later language development. First Language, 27, 315–328.Google Scholar
Best, C. T. (1994). The emergence of native-language phonological influences in infants: A perceptual assimilation model. In J. Goodman & H. Nusbaum (Eds.), The development of speech perception: The transition from speech sounds to spoken words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Sithole, N. M. (1997). Examination of perceptual reorganization for nonnative speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 14, 345–360.Google Scholar
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). Native-language recognition abilities in 4-month-old infants from monolingual and bilingual environments. Cognition, 65, 33–69.Google Scholar
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2003). Simultaneous bilingualism and the perception of a language-specific vowel contrast in the first year of life. Language and Speech, 46, 217–243.Google Scholar
Brown, C., & Matthews, D. (1997). The role of feature geometry in the development of phonemic contrasts. In S. J. Hannahs & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), Focus on phonological acquisition. Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bruderer, A. G., Danielson, D. K., Kandhadai, P., & Werker, J. F. (2015). Sensorimotor influences on speech perception in infancy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 13531–13536.Google Scholar
Burns, T. C., Yoshida, K. A., Hill, K., & Werker, J. F. (2007). The development of phonetic representation in bilingual and monolingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 455–474.Google Scholar
Byers-Heinlein, K., Burns, T. C., & Werker, J. F. (2010). The roots of bilingualism in newborns. Psychological Science, 21, 343–348.Google Scholar
Choi, D., Kandhadai, P., Danielson, D. K., Bruderer, A. G., & Werker, J. F. (in press). Does early motor development contribute to speech perception? [Peer commentary on “Neonatal Imitation in Context: Sensory-Motor Development in the Perinatal Period” by N. Keven & K. A. Akins]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.Google Scholar
Coloun, M., Hemimou, C., & Streri, A. (2013). Effects of seeing and hearing vowels on neonatal facial imitation. Infancy, 18, 782–796.Google Scholar
Cristia, A., McGuire, G. L., Seidl, A., & Francis, A. L. (2011). Effects of the distribution of acoustic cues on infants’ perception of sibilants. Journal of Phonetics, 39, 388–402.Google Scholar
Curtin, S., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Perceptual foundations of phonological development. In M. Gareth Gaskell, G. T. M. Altmann, P. Bloom, A. Caramazza, & P. Levelt (Eds.), Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Danielson, D. K., Bruderer, A. G., Kandhadai, P., Vatikiotis-Bateson, E., & Werker, J. F. (2017). The organization and reorganization of audiovisual speech perception in the first year of life. Cognitive Development, 42, 37–48.Google Scholar
DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mothers’ voices. Science, 208, 1174–1176.Google Scholar
Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (2000). Cerebral specialization for speech and non-speech stimuli in infants. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 449–460.Google Scholar
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Dehaene, S., & Hertz-Pannier, L. (2002). Functional neuroimaging of speech perception in infants. Science, 298, 2013–2015.Google Scholar
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., & Gliga, T. (2004). Common neural basis for phoneme processing in infants and adults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 1375–1387.Google Scholar
de la Cruz Pavía, I., Werker, J. F., Vatikiotis-Bateson, E., & Gervain, J. (2016). Head nods influence perceived phrase segmentation: A study with adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Poster presented by I. de la Cruz Pavia at the AMLAP16 Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Psychology Workshop, Bilbao, Spain, September 1–3, 2016.Google Scholar
DePaolis, R. A., Vihman, M. M., & Keren-Portnoy, T. (2011). Do production patterns influence the processing of speech in prelinguistic infants? Infant Behavior and Development, 34, 590–601.Google Scholar
Dietrich, C., Swingley, D., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 16027–16031.Google Scholar
Eimas, P. D., Siqueland, E. R., Jusczyk, P., & Vigorito, J. (1971). Speech perception in infants. Science, 171, 303–306.Google Scholar
Fais, L., Werker, J. F., Brown, C., Leibowich, J., Barbosa, A. V., & Vatikiotis-Bateson, E. (2012). Here’s looking at you, baby: What gaze and movement reveal about minimal pair word-object association at 14 months. Laboratory Phonology, 3, 91–124.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T. (2012). Object familiarity enhances infants’ use of phonetic detail in novel words. Infancy, 17, 339–353.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2014). You sound like Mommy: Bilingual and monolingual infants learn words best from speakers typical of their language environments. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 38, 309–316.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Using speech sounds to guide word learning: The case of bilingual infants. Child Development, 78, 1510–1525.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T., & Waxman, S. R. (2010). What paradox? Referential cues allow for infant use of phonetic detail in word learning. Child Development, 81, 1376–1383.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T., & Werker, J. F. (2003). Early word learners’ ability to access phonetic detail in well-known words. Language and Speech, 46, 245–264.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J., Pethick, S. J., & … Stiles, J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, 1–185.Google Scholar
Ferguson, B., & Waxman, S. R. (2016), What the [beep]? Six-month-olds link novel communicative signals to meaning. Cognition, 146, 185–189.Google Scholar
Ferry, A., Hespos, S., & Waxman, S. (2013). Non-human primate vocalizations support categorization in very young human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 15231–15235.Google Scholar
Friedrich, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2017). The origins of word learning: Brain responses of 3-month-olds indicate their rapid association of objects and words. Developmental Science, 20, e12357.Google Scholar
Gervain, J., & Mehler, J. (2010). Speech perception and language acquisition in the first year of life. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 191–218.Google Scholar
Gervain, J., Nespor, M., Mazuka, R., Horie, R., & Mehler, J. (2008). Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: A Japanese-Italian cross-linguistic study. Cognitive Psychology, 57, 56–74.Google Scholar
Gervain, J., & Werker, J. F. (2013). Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Nature Communications, 4, 1–6.Google Scholar
Gervain, J., Werker, J. F., Black, A., & Geffen, M. N. (2016). The neural correlates of processing scale-invariant environmental sounds at birth. NeuroImage, 133, 144–150.Google Scholar
Gómez, D. M., Berent, I., Benavides-Varela, S., Bion, R. A. H., Cattarossi, L., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (2014). Language universals at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 5837–5841.Google Scholar
Guellaï, B., Streri, A., & Yeung, H. H. (2014). The development of sensorimotor influences in the audiovisual speech domain: Some critical questions. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–7.Google Scholar
Havy, M., Foroud, A., Fais, L., & Werker, J. F. (2017). The role of auditory and visual speech in word learning at 18 months and in adulthood. Child Development, 88, 2043–2059.Google Scholar
Hayes-Harb, R. (2007). Lexical and statistical evidence in the acquisition of second language phonemes. Second Language Research, 23, 1–31.Google Scholar
Heitner, R. (2004). The cyclical ontogeny of ontology: An integrated developmental account of object and speech categorization. Philosophical Psychology, 17, 45–57.Google Scholar
Hensch, T. K. (2005). Critical period plasticity in local cortical circuits. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 877–888.Google Scholar
Höhle, B., Bijeljac-Babic, R., Herold, B., Weissenborn, J., & Nazzi, T. (2009). Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 32, 262–274.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W. (1993). From general to language-specific capacities: The WRAPSA model of how speech perception develops. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 3–28.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A., & Redanz, N. J. (1993). Infants’ preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. Child Development, 64, 675–687.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Luce, P. A., & Charles-Luce, J. (1994). Infants’ sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 630–645.Google Scholar
Kemp, N., Scott, J., Bernhardt, B. M., Johnson, C. E., Siegel, L. S., & Werker, J. F. (2017). Minimal pair word learning and vocabulary size: Links with later language skills. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38, 289–314.Google Scholar
Kluender, K. R., Lotto, A. J., Holt, L. L., & Bloedel, S. L. (1998). Role of experience for language-specific functional mappings of vowel sounds. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 104, 3568–3582.Google Scholar
Kubicek, C., de Boisferon, A. H., Dupierrix, E., Pascalis, O., Loevenbruck, H., Gervain, J., & Schwarzer, G. (2014). Cross-modal matching of audio-visual German and French fluent speech in infancy. PLOS ONE, 9, e89275.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (1991). Human adults and human infants show a “perceptual magnet effect” for the prototypes of speech categories, monkeys do not. Perception and Psychophysics, 50, 93–107.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (1993). Early linguistic experience and phonetic perception: Implications for theories of developmental speech perception. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 125–139.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews, 5, 831–843.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (2010). Brain mechanisms in early language acquisition. Neuron, 67, 713–727.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., & Nelson, T. (2008). Phonetic learning as a pathway to language: New data and native language magnet theory expanded (NLM-e). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 363, 979–1000.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A N. (1982). The bimodal perception of speech in infancy. Science, 218, 1138–1141.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Stevens, E., Hayashi, A., Deguchi, T., Kiritani, S., & Iverson, P. (2006). Infants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months. Developmental Science, 9, F13–F21.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F., & Liu, H. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 9096–9101.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., Lacerda, F., Stevens, K. N., & Lindblom, B. (1992). Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. Science, 255, 606–608.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. (1949). Acquired distinctiveness of cues: I. Transfer between discriminations on the basis of familiarity with the stimulus. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39, 770–784.Google Scholar
Liu, L., & Kager, R. W. J. (2014). Perception of tones by infants learning a non-tone language. Cognition, 133, 385–394.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, H., Graham, S. A., & Curtin, S. (2011). Twelve-month-olds privilege words over other linguistic sounds in an associative learning task. Developmental Science, 14, 399–410.Google Scholar
Mandel, D. R., Jusczyk, P. W., & Pisoni, D. B. (1995). Infants’ recognition of the sound patterns of their own names. Psychological Science, 6, 314–317.Google Scholar
Mani, N., & Plunkett, K. (2010). Twelve-month-olds know their cups from their keps and tups. Infancy, 15, 445–470.Google Scholar
Martin, A., Onishi, K. H., & Vouloumanos, A. (2012). Understanding the abstract role of speech in communication at 12 months. Cognition, 123, 50–60.Google Scholar
Mattock, K., & Burnham, D. (2006). Chinese and English infants’ tone perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization. Infancy, 10, 241–265.Google Scholar
Mattock, K., Molnar, M., Polka, L., & Burnham, D. (2008). The developmental course of lexical tone perception in the first year of life. Cognition, 106, 1367–1381.Google Scholar
Mattock, K., Polka, L., Rvachew, S., & Krehm, M. (2010). The first steps in word learning are easier when the shoes fit: Comparing monolingual and bilingual infants. Developmental Science, 13, 229–243.Google Scholar
Maurer, D., & Werker, J. F. (2014). Perceptual narrowing during infancy: A comparison of language and faces. Developmental Psychobiology, 56, 154–178.Google Scholar
May, L., Byers-Heinlein, K., Gervain, J., & Werker, J. F. (2011). Language and the newborn brain: Does prenatal language experience shape the neonate neural response to speech? Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 19.Google Scholar
May, L., Gervain, J., Carreiras, M., & Werker, J. F. (2017). The specificity of the neural response to speech at birth. Developmental Science, e12564.Google Scholar
May, L., & Werker, J. F. (2014). Can a click be a word? Infants’ learning of non-native words. Infancy, 19, 281–300.Google Scholar
Maye, J., & Gerken, L. (2001). Learning phonemes: How far can the input take us? Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 25, 480–490.Google Scholar
Maye, J., Weiss, D. J., & Aslin, R. N. (2008). Statistical phonetic learning in infants: Facilitation and feature generalization. Developmental Science, 11, 122–134.Google Scholar
Maye, J., Werker, J. F., & Gerken, L. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition, 82, B101–B111.Google Scholar
McMurray, B., Aslin, R. N., & Toscano, J. C. (2009). Statistical learning of phonetic categories: Insights from a computational approach. Developmental Science, 12, 369–378.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., & Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition, 29, 143–178.Google Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (2016). Exploring the infant social brain: What’s going on in there? Zero to Three Journal, 36, 2–9.Google Scholar
Minagawa-Kawai, Y., van der Lely, H., Ramus, F., Sato, Y., Mazuka, R., & Dupoux, E. (2011). Optical brain imaging reveals general auditory and language-specific processing in early infant development. Cerebral Cortex, 21, 254–261.Google Scholar
Moon, C., Cooper, R. P., & Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their native language. Infant Behavior and Development, 16, 495–500.Google Scholar
Moon, C., Lagercrantz, H., & Kuhl, P. K. (2013). Language experienced in utero affects vowel perception after birth: A two-country study. Acta Paediatrica, 102, 156–160.Google Scholar
Mugitani, R., Pons, F., Fais, L., Werker, J. F., & Amano, S. (2009). Perception of vowel length by Japanese- and English-learning infants. Developmental Psychology, 45, 236–247.Google Scholar
Narayan, C., Werker, J. F., & Beddor, P. S. (2010). The interaction between acoustic salience and language experience in developmental speech perception: Evidence from nasal place discrimination. Developmental Science, 13, 407–420.Google Scholar
Nazzi, T., Floccia, C., & Bertoncini, J. (1998). Discrimination of pitch contours by neonates. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 779–784.Google Scholar
Nazzi, T., Jusczyk, P. W., & Johnson, E. K. (2000). Language discrimination by English-learning 5-month-olds: Effects of rhythm and familiarity. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 1–19.Google Scholar
Palmer, S. B., Fais, L., Golinkoff, R. M., & Werker, J. F. (2012). Perceptual narrowing of linguistic sign occurs in the 1st year of life. Child Development, 83, 543–553.Google Scholar
Pater, J., Stager, C., & Werker, J. F. (2004). The perceptual acquisition of phonological contrasts. Language, 80, 384–402.Google Scholar
Patterson, M. L., & Werker, J. F. (1999). Matching phonetic information in lips and voice is robust in 4.5-month-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 22, 237–247.Google Scholar
Patterson, M. L., & Werker, J. F. (2003). Two-month-old infants match phonetic information in lips and voice. Developmental Science, 6, 191–196.Google Scholar
Peña, M., Maki, A., Kovac̆ić, D., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Koizumi, H., Bouquet, F., & Mehler, J. (2003). Sounds and silence: An optical topography study of language recognition at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 11702–11705.Google Scholar
Peña, M., Werker, J. F., & Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (2012). Earlier speech exposure does not accelerate speech acquisition. Journal of Neuroscience, 32, 11159–11163.Google Scholar
Perani, D., Saccuman, M. C., Scifo, P., Anwander, A., Spada, D., Baldoli, C., & … Friederici, A. D. (2011). Neural language networks at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 16056–16061.Google Scholar
Perszyk, D., & Waxman, S. R. (2016). Listening to the calls of the wild: The role of experience in linking language and cognition in young infants. Cognition, 153, 175–181.Google Scholar
Petitto, L. A., Berens, M. S., Kovelman, I., Dubins, M. H., Jasinska, K., & Shalinsky, M. (2012). The “Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis” as the basis for bilingual babies phonetic processing advantage: New insights from fNIRS brain imaging. Brain and Language, 121, 130–143.Google Scholar
Pi Casaus, G., Sebastián-Gallés, N., Werker, J. F., & Bonatti, L. (2015). The role of linguistic experience in percetual narrowing: The case of bilingual infants. Talk presented by G. Pi at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston University, November 12–15, 2015.Google Scholar
Polka, L., & Werker, J. F. (1994). Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 421–435.Google Scholar
Pons, F., Lewkowicz, D. J., Soto-Faraco, S., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2009). Narrowing of intersensory speech perception in infancy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 10598–10602.Google Scholar
Rost, G. C., & McMurry, B. (2009). Speaker variability augments phonological processing in early word learning. Developmental Science, 12, 339–349.Google Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month old infants. Science, 274, 1926–1928.Google Scholar
Sansavini, A., Bertoncini, J., & Giovanelli, G. (1997). Newborns discriminate the rhythm of multisyllabic stressed words. Developmental Psychology, 33, 3.Google Scholar
Sato, Y., Sogabe, Y., & Mazuka, R. (2010). Discrimination of phonemic vowel length by Japanese infants. Developmental Psychology, 46, 106–119.Google Scholar
Sebastián-Gallés, N., Albareda, B., Weikum, W., & Werker, J. F. (2012). A bilingual advantage in visual language discrimination in infancy. Psychological Science, 23, 994–999.Google Scholar
Shi, R., & Lepage, M. (2008). The effect of functional morphemes on word segmentation in preverbal infants. Developmental Science, 11, 407–413.Google Scholar
Shi, R., Werker, J. F., & Cutler, A. (2006). Recognition and representation of function words in English-learning infants. Infancy, 10, 187–198.Google Scholar
Shi, R., Werker, J. F., & Morgan, J. L. (1999). Newborn infants’ sensitivity to perceptual cues to lexical and grammatical words. Cognition, 72, B11–B21.Google Scholar
Shultz, S., Vouloumanos, A., Bennett, R. H., & Pelphy, K. (2014). Neural specialization for speech in the first months of life. Developmental Science, 72, 1–9.Google Scholar
Singh, L., Hui, T. J., Chan, C., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2014). Influences of vowel and tone variation on emergent word knowledge: A cross-linguistic investigation. Developmental Science, 17, 94–109.Google Scholar
Skoruppa, K., Pons, F., Christophe, A., Bosch, L., Dupoux, E., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & … Peperkamp, S. (2009). Language-specific stress perception by 9-month-old French and Spanish infants. Developmental Science, 12, 914–919.Google Scholar
Stager, C. L., & Werker, J. F. (1997). Infants listen for more phonetic detail in speech perception than in word learning tasks. Nature, 388, 381–382.Google Scholar
Streeter, L. A. (1976). Language perception of 2-month-old infants shows effects of both innate mechanisms and experience. Nature, 259, 39–41.Google Scholar
Sundara, M., Polka, L., & Molnar, M. (2008). Development of coronal stop perception: Bilingual infants keep pace with their monolingual peers. Cognition, 108, 232–242.Google Scholar
Swingley, D. (2007). Lexical exposure and word-form encoding in 1.5-year-olds. Developmental Psychology, 43, 454–464.Google Scholar
Swingley, D. (2009). Contributions of infant word learning to language development. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 3617–3622.Google Scholar
Swingley, D., & Aslin, R. N. (2000). Spoken word recognition and lexical representation in very young children. Cognition, 76, 147–166.Google Scholar
Swingley, D., & Aslin, R. N. (2007). Lexical competition in young children’s word learning. Cognitive Psychology, 54, 99–132.Google Scholar
Takesian, A. E., & Hensch, T. (2013). Balancing stability/plasticity across brain development. Progress in Brain Research, 207, 3–34.Google Scholar
Teinonen, T., Aslin, R. N., Alku, P., & Csibra, G. (2008). Visual speech contributes to phonetic learning in 6-month-old infants. Cognition, 108, 850–855.Google Scholar
Ter Schure, S., Junge, C., & Boersma, P. (2016). Discriminating non-native vowels on the basis of multimodal, auditory, or visual information: Effects on infants’ looking patterns and discrimination. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1–11.Google Scholar
Thiessen, E. D. (2007). The effect of distributional information on children’s use of phonemic contrasts. Journal of Memory & Language, 56, 16–34.Google Scholar
Thiessen, E. D., Kronstein, A. T., & Hufnagle, D. G. (2013). The extraction and integration framework: A two-process account of statistical learning. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 792–814.Google Scholar
Tincoff, R., & Jusczyk, P. W. (1999). Some beginnings of word comprehension in 6-month-olds. Psychological Science, 10, 172–175.Google Scholar
Tincoff, R., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2012). Six-month-olds comprehend words that refer to parts of the body. Infancy, 17, 432–444.Google Scholar
Trubetskoy, N. S. (1969). Principles of phonology (C. A. M. Baltaxe, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Original work published 1958)Google Scholar
Vouloumanos, A., Druhen, M. J., Hauser, M. D., & Huizink, A. T. (2009). Five-month-old infants’ identification of the sources of vocalizations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 18867–18872.Google Scholar
Vouloumanos, A., Hauser, M. D., Werker, J. F., & Martin, A. (2010). The tuning of human neonates’ preference for speech. Child Development, 81, 517–527.Google Scholar
Vouloumanos, A., Onishi, K. H., & Pogue, A. (2012). Twelve-month-old infants recognize that speech can communicate unobservable intentions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 12933–12937.Google Scholar
Vouloumanos, A., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Listening to language at birth: Evidence for a bias for speech in neonates. Developmental Science, 10, 159–164.Google Scholar
Waxman, S. R. (2004). Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought: Links between early word-learning and conceptual organization. In D. G. Hall & S. R. Waxman (Eds.), Weaving a lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Weatherhead, D., & White, K. S. (2017). Read my lips: Visual speech influences word processing in infants. Cognition, 160, 103–109.Google Scholar
Weikum, W. M., Oberlander, T. F., Hensch, T. K., & Werker, J. F. (2012). Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and depressed maternal mood alter trajectory of infant speech perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 17221–17227.Google Scholar
Weikum, W. M., Vouloumanos, A., Navarra, J., Soto-Faraco, S., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Visual language discrimination in infancy. Science, 316, 1159.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. (1989). Becoming a native listener: A developmental perspective on human speech perception. American Scientist, 77, 54–59.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., Cohen, L. B., Lloyd, V., Stager, C. L., & Casasola, M. (1998). Acquisition of word-object associations by 14-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1289–1309.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Curtin, S. (2005). PRIMIR: A developmental framework of infant speech processing. Language Learning and Development, 1, 197–234.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Fennell, C. T. (2004). Listening to sounds versus listening to words: Early steps in word learning. In G. Hall & S. Waxman (Eds.), Weaving a lexicon (pp. 79–109). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., Fennell, C. T., Corcoran, K., & Stager, C. L. (2002). Infants’ ability to learn phonetically similar words: Effects of age and vocabulary size. Infancy, 3, 1–30.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., Gilbert, J. H. V., Humphrey, G. K., & Tees, R. C. (1981). Developmental aspects of cross-language speech perception. Child Development, 52, 349–355.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Hensch, T. K. (2015). Critical periods in speech perception: New directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 173–196.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Lalonde, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change. Developmental Psychology, 24, 672–683.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Logan, J. S. (1985). Cross-language evidence for three factors in speech perception. Perception & Psychophysics, 37, 35–44.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 49–63.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (2005). Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems of the brain. Developmental Psychobiology, 46, 233–251.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F., Yeung, H. H., & Yoshida, K. A. (2012). How do infants become experts at native-speech perception? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 221–226.Google Scholar
Wojcik, E., de la Cruz Pavía, I., & Werker, J. F. (2017). Language acquisition. Oxford research encyclopedia of psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.56.Google Scholar
Wu, R., Gopnik, A., Richardson, D. C., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2011). Infants learn about objects from statistics and people. Developmental Psychology, 47, 1220–1229.Google Scholar
Xu, F. (2016). Preliminary thoughts on a rational constructivist approach to cognitive development: Primitives, symbols, learning, and thinking. In D. Barner & A. S. Baron (Eds.), Core knowledge and conceptual change. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yeung, H. H. (2005). Infants’ understanding of signs: Linking sounds and concepts (Unpublished MA thesis, University of British Columbia, Vancouver).Google Scholar
Yeung, H. H., Chen, K. H., & Werker, J. F. (2013). When does native language input affect phonetic perception? The precocious case of lexical tone. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 123–139.Google Scholar
Yeung, H. H., Chen, L. M., & Werker, J. F. (2014). Referential labeling can facilitate phonetic learning in infancy. Child Development, 85, 1036–1049.Google Scholar
Yeung, H. H., & Nazzi, T. (2014). Object labeling influences infant phonetic learning and generalization. Cognition, 132, 151–163.Google Scholar
Yeung, H. H., & Werker, J. F. (2009). Learning words’ sounds before learning how words sound: 9-month-olds use distinct objects as cues to categorize speech information. Cognition, 113, 234–243.Google Scholar
Yeung, H. H., & Werker, J. F. (2013). Lip movements affect infants’ audiovisual speech perception. Psychological Science, 24, 603–612.Google Scholar
Yoshida, K. A., Fennell, C. T., Swingley, D., & Werker, J. F. (2009). Fourteen month-old infants learn similar sounding words. Developmental Science, 12, 412–418.Google Scholar
Yoshida, K. A., Pons, F., Maye, J., & Werker, J. F. (2010). Distributional phonetic learning at 10 months of age. Infancy, 15, 420–433.Google Scholar