Can infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic answer

Cognition
Alejandrina Cristia

Abstract

Two of the key tasks facing the language-learning infant lie at the level of phonology: establishing which sounds are contrastive in the native inventory, and determining what their possible syllabic positions and permissible combinations (phonotactics) are. In 2002-2003, two theoretical proposals, one bearing on how infants can learn sounds (Maye, Werker, & Gerken, 2002) and the other on phonotactics (Chambers, Onishi, & Fisher, 2003), were put forward on the pages of Cognition, each supported by two laboratory experiments, wherein a group of infants was briefly exposed to a set of pseudo-words, and plausible phonological generalizations were tested subsequently. These two papers have received considerable attention from the general scientific community, and inspired a flurry of follow-up work. In the context of questions regarding the replicability of psychological science, the present work uses a meta-analytic approach to appraise extant empirical evidence for infant phonological learning in the laboratory. It is found that neither seminal finding (on learning sounds and learning phonotactics) holds up when close methodological replications are integrated, although less close methodological replications do provide some evide...Continue Reading

Citations

Jul 18, 2018·Developmental Science·Hugh RabagliatiCasey Lew-Williams
Feb 5, 2021·Brain Sciences·Mihye Choi, Mohinish Shukla
Jan 30, 2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Thomas SchatzEmmanuel Dupoux
Mar 30, 2021·Bilingualism : Language and Cognition·Megha SundaraPatricia K Kuhl
Mar 30, 2021·Frontiers in Psychology·David W GowSeppo P Ahlfors

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