Contemporary models of adult speech perception acknowledge that the processing of linguistic and nonlinguistic aspects of the speech signal are interdependent. But when in development does this interdependence first emerge? In the adult literature, one way to demonstrate this relationship has been to examine how language experience affects talker…

Adults recognize talkers better when the talkers speak a familiar language than when they speak an unfamiliar language. This language familiarity effect (LFE) demonstrates the inseparable nature of linguistic and indexical information in adult spoken language processing. Relatively little is known about children's integration of linguistic and…

Purpose: To examine the possibility that early signal-to-word form mapping capabilities are robust enough to handle substantial indexical variation in the realization of words. Method: Two groups of 7.5-month-olds were tested with the Headturn Preference Procedure. Half of the infants were exposed to words embedded in passages spoken by their…

English-learning 7.5-month-olds are heavily biased to perceive stressed syllables as word onsets. By 11 months, however, infants begin segmenting non-initially stressed words from speech. Using the same artificial language methodology as Johnson and Jusczyk (2001), we explored the possibility that the emergence of this ability is linked to a…

In a landmark study, Jusczyk and Aslin (1995 ) demonstrated that English-learning infants are able to segment words from continuous speech at 7.5 months of age. In the current study, we explored the possibility that infants segment words from the edges of utterances more readily than the middle of utterances. The same procedure was used as in…