Since there are no systematic pauses delimiting words in speech, the problem of word segmentation is formidable even for monolingual infants. We use computational modeling to assess whether word segmentation is substantially harder in a bilingual than a monolingual setting. Seven algorithms representing different cognitive approaches to…

Multisyllabic words constitute a large portion of children's vocabulary. However, the relationship between phonological neighborhood density and English multisyllabic word learning is poorly understood. We examine this link in three, four and six year old children using a corpus-based approach. While we were able to replicate the well-accepted…

This review describes a computational approach for modeling the development of speech motor control in infants. We address the development of two levels of control: articulation of individual speech sounds (defined here as phonemes, syllables, or words for which there is an optimized motor program) and production of sound sequences such as phrases…

This paper addresses how input variability in the adult phonological system is mastered in the output of young children in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, involving variability between labio-palatalized consonants and front rounded vowels. The high-frequency variant involves a complex consonant which is expected to be mastered late, while…

Many Aboriginal Australian communities are undergoing language shift from traditional Indigenous languages to contact varieties such as Kriol, an English-lexified Creole. Kriol is reportedly characterised by lexical items with highly variable phonological specifications, and variable implementation of voicing and manner contrasts in obstruents…

Emerging evidence suggests domain-general processes, including working memory, may contribute to reduced speech production skills in young children. This study compared the phonological short-term (pSTM) and phonological working memory (pWM) abilities of 50 monolingual English-speaking children between 3;6 and 5;11 with typical speech production…

Phonological selectivity is a phenomenon where children preselect which target words they attempt to produce. The present study examines selectivity in the acquisition of complex onsets and codas in English, and specifically in the acquisition of biconsonantal (CC) clusters in each position compared to triconsonantal (CCC) clusters. The data come…

This study investigates whether the earliest words children choose to say are mainly words containing sounds they can produce (cf. 'phonological dominance' hypotheses), or whether children choose words without regard to their phonological characteristics (cf. 'lexical dominance' hypotheses). Phonological properties of words in spontaneous speech…

It is widely agreed that learning to read starts with the establishment of letter-to-phoneme correspondences. However, it is also widely agreed that prereaders do not have access to phoneme units. Here we show that the building of associations between letters and syllables, which we call the "syllabic bridge", might be a faster and more…

The study analysed spectral and tongue shape dynamics of voiceless alveolar and postalveolar fricatives produced by ten children learning Scottish English. Synchronised ultrasound tongue imaging data and acoustic data were used to characterise children's productions of the phonemic contrast. Six children had consistently accurate productions of…

In this paper, we investigate the effect of neighbourhood density (ND) on vocabulary size in a computational model of vocabulary development. A word has a high ND if there are many words phonologically similar to it. High ND words are more easily learned by infants of all abilities (e.g. Storkel, 2009; Stokes, 2014). We present a neural network…

The ability to compute non-adjacent regularities is key in the acquisition of a new language. In the domain of phonology/phonotactics, sensitivity to non-adjacent regularities between consonants has been found to appear between 7 and 10 months. The present study focuses on the emergence of a posterior-anterior (PA) bias, a regularity involving two…

This study investigates the role of acoustic salience and hearing impairment in learning phonologically minimal pairs. Picture-matching and object-matching tasks were used to investigate the learning of consonant and vowel minimal pairs in five- to six-year-old deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI), and children of the same age with normal…

Young children's first attempts at CVC words are often realized with the final consonant being heavily aspirated or followed by an epenthetic vowel (e.g. "cat"/kaet/ realized as [kaet[superscript h]] or [kaet[superscript ?]]). This has led some to propose that young children represent word-final (coda) consonants as an onset-nucleus…

Pronunciation variation is under-studied in infant-directed speech, particularly for consonants. Regressive place assimilation involves a word-final alveolar stop taking the place of articulation of a following word-initial consonant. We investigated pronunciation variation in word-final alveolar stop consonants in storybooks read by forty-eight…