Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Publication

Disentangling Frequency and Talker Variability in a Statistical Learning Task Investigating Child Speech Acquisition

Good, Amanda Koehn
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract

Past research suggests that statistical patterns in a child’s native language influence the child’s speech production accuracy (Stoel-Gammon, 1998; Plante, Bahl, Vance, & Gerken, 2011). In addition to hearing some forms more often than others, children also hear forms from a variety of talkers in their environments (parents, caretakers, etc.). This variable, known as talker variability, can have facilitative effects on children’s ability to reproduce nonwords (Plante et al., 2011; Richtsmeier, Gerken, Goffman, and Hogan, 2009).To further investigate frequency and talker variability, the current study employed a within-subjects design to expose 3-4 year olds to four levels of experimental frequency, with and without talker variability. The results of this study suggest a benefit for perceptual frequencies greater than 1, and for production practice. Benefits from talker variability should not be ruled out, but may be less robust than basic perceptual frequency.

Date
2017-05-01
Collections