Development of non‐native vowel discrimination: Improvement without exposure. (27th December 2013) - Mazuka, Reiko
ABSTRACT: The present study tested Japanese 4.5‐ and 10‐month old infants' ability to discriminate three German vowel pairs, none of which are contrastive in Japanese, using a visual habituation–dishabituation paradigm. Japanese adults' discrimination of the same pairs was also tested. The results revealed that Japanese 4.5‐month old infants discriminated the German /bu:k/‐/by:k/ contrast, but they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bi:k/‐/be:k/ or /bu:k/‐/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese 10‐month old infants, on the other hand, discriminated the German /bi:k/‐/be:k/ contrast, while they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bu:k/‐/by:k/ or /bu:k/‐/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese adults, in contrast, were highly accurate in their discrimination of all of the pairs. The results indicate that discrimination of non‐native contrasts is not always easy even for young infants, and that their ability to discriminate non‐native contrasts can improve with age even when they receive no exposure to a language in which the given contrast is phonemic. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc . Dev Psychobiol 56: 192–209, 2014.