Lecture 6 - Part 3

Question 1

what did jusczyk & aslin find regarding infants ability to extract words from fluent speech

Answer 1

they have a rudimentary ability to detect it by 7.5 months

Question 2

how can babies tell where one word ends and the next begins

Answer 2

infant directed speech

discovery of cues in the language input, such as syllable stress

Question 3

what did jusczyk, cutler & redanz find regarding infants’ sensitivity to syllable stress

Answer 3

9 month old babies spent longer listening to strong-weak word lists compared to weak-strong word lists

6m/o had no preference

Question 4

what is a transitional probability

Answer 4

the idea that certain sequences of syllables will occur more often than others

Question 5

what was phase 1 of saffran et al and johnson & jusczyk’s experiments

Answer 5

8 month old infants heard 4 made up words repeated in random order with no pauses

Question 6

what was phase 2 of saffran et al and johnson & jusczyk’s experiments

Answer 6

infants were presented with the 4 words, and attention to words was measured by orientation towards the speaker

Question 7

what are the implications of the two studies

Answer 7

at 8 months old, infants able to segment a continuous stream of speech

suggests infants have a powerful mechanism for the computation of language