Consonant and Vowel Processing in Word Form Segmentation: An Infant ERP Study.

Segmentation skill and the preferential processing of consonants (C-bias) develop during the second half of the first year of life and it has been proposed that these facilitate language acquisition. We used Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural bases of early word form segmentation, and of the early processing of onset consonants, medial vowels, and coda consonants, exploring how differences in these early skills might be related to later language outcomes. Our results with French-learning eight-month-old infants primarily support previous studies that found that the word familiarity effect in segmentation is developing from a positive to a negative polarity at this age.

Vowels, then consonants: Early bias switch in recognizing segmented word forms.

The division of labor hypothesis proposed by Nespor, Peña, and Mehler (2003) postulates that consonants are more important than vowels in lexical processing (when learning and recognizing words). This consonant bias (C-bias) is supported by many adult and toddler studies. However, some cross-linguistic variation has been found in toddlerhood, and various hypotheses have been proposed to account for the origin of the consonant bias, which make distinct predictions regarding its developmental trajectory during the first year of life.

Early Speech Segmentation in French-learning Infants: Monosyllabic Words versus Embedded Syllables.

Lexical acquisition relies on many mechanisms, one of which corresponds to segmentation abilities, that is, the ability to extract word forms from fluent speech. This ability is important since words are rarely produced in isolation even when talking to infants. The present study explored whether young French-learning infants segment from fluent speech the rhythmic unit of their native language, the syllable.

[Language acquisition in preterm infants during the first year of life].

Previous studies have shown that preterm children are at a higher risk for cognitive and language delays than full-term children. Most of these studies have concentrated on the effects of prematurity during the preschool or school years, while the effect of preterm birth on the early development of language, much of which occurs during the first year of life, remains very little explored. This article focuses on this crucial period and reviews the studies that have explored early phonological and lexical development in preterm infants.

Early syllabic segmentation of fluent speech by infants acquiring French.

Word form segmentation abilities emerge during the first year of life, and it has been proposed that infants initially rely on two types of cues to extract words from fluent speech: Transitional Probabilities (TPs) and rhythmic units. The main goal of the present study was to use the behavioral method of the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP) to investigate again rhythmic segmentation of syllabic units by French-learning infants at the onset of segmentation abilities (around 8 months) given repeated failure to find syllabic segmentation at such a young age. The second goal was to explore the interaction between the use of TPs and syllabic units for segmentation by French-learning infants.