How Transitional Probabilities and the Edge Effect Contribute to Listeners' Phonological Bootstrapping Success. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sohail, Juwairia; Johnson, Elizabeth K.
• Is Part Of: Language learning and development. Volume 12:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 105
• Page End: 115
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: Language acquisition -- Research -- Periodicals; Children -- Language -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2015.1073153
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1547-5441

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Much of what we know about the development of listeners' word segmentation strategies originates from the artificial language-learning literature. However, many artificial speech streams designed to study word segmentation lack a salient cue found in all natural languages: utterance boundaries. In this study, participants listened to a speech-stream containing one of three sets of word boundary cues: transitional probabilities between syllables (TP Condition), silences marking utterance boundaries (UB Condition), or a combination of both cues (TP + UB Condition). Recognition of the trained words and rule words (words not in language, but conforming to its phonotactic structure) was tested. Participants performed equally well in the TP + UB and UB Conditions, scoring above chance on both trained and rule words. Performance in the TP condition, however, was at chance. Our results suggest that attention to UBs is a particularly effective strategy for finding words in speech, possibly providing a language-general solution to the word segmentation problem.