Previous studies have suggested that the perception of vowels and consonants changes from language-universal to language-specific between 6 and 12 months of age. This report suggests that language-specific perception emerges even earlier for lexical tones. Experiment 1 tested English-learners' perception of Cantonese tones, replicating declines in…

This study investigated vowel length discrimination in infants from 2 language backgrounds, Japanese and English, in which vowel length is either phonemic or nonphonemic. Experiment 1 revealed that English 18-month-olds discriminate short and long vowels although vowel length is not phonemically contrastive in English. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed…

A series of experiments indicated that by 1 year of age, infants' perceptual categories correspond to linguistically significant categories. Developmental change between 6 and 12 months shows that perceptual abilities of the 1-year-old are not arbitrary, do not reflect all the discriminatory capabilities of the infant, and are similar to phonemic…