The influence of babbling patterns on the processing of speech.

This study compared the preference of 27 British English- and 26 Welsh-learning infants for nonwords featuring consonants that occur with equal frequency in the input but that are produced either with equal frequency (Welsh) or with differing frequency (British English) in infant vocalizations. For the English infants a significant difference in looking times was related to the extent of production of the nonword consonants. The Welsh infants, who showed no production preference for either consonant, exhibited no such influence of production patterns on their response to the nonwords.

Separability of prosodic phrase boundary and phonemic information.

It was hypothesized that the retrieval of prosodic and phonemic information from the acoustic signal is facilitated when prosodic information is encoded by co-occurring suprasegmental cues. To test the hypothesis, two-choice speeded classification experiments were conducted, which examined processing interaction between prosodic phrase-boundary vs stop-place information in speakers of Southern British English. Results confirmed that the degree of interaction between boundary and stop-place information diminished when the pre-boundary vowel was signaled by duration and F(0), compared to when it was signaled by either duration or F(0) alone.