Infants’ Sensitivity to the Syllable Frequencies in Dutch: An extension of Jusczyk et al. (1994)

We conducted an experiment to investigate Dutch infants' sensitivity to the frequency of syllable occurrences in their native language, extending the seminal research by Jusczyk et al. (1994). This foundational work has inspired numerous subsequent studies, significantly informing our understanding of language and cognitive development during the first year of life. Based on experiment 3 of the original Jusczyk et al. study, we tested 9-month-old Dutch infants using the Head-turn Preference Procedure. Unlike the original study, we controlled our stimuli sets for phonotactics, ensuring that the high- and low-frequency syllables were balanced in their place and manner of articulation, differing only in their frequency of occurrence. Our results indicate that, contrary to the original findings and our prediction, the infants tested did not discern high-frequency Dutch syllables from their low-frequency counterparts. This suggests that Dutch infants, while learning to discriminate words...Show moreWe conducted an experiment to investigate Dutch infants' sensitivity to the frequency of syllable occurrences in their native language, extending the seminal research by Jusczyk et al. (1994). This foundational work has inspired numerous subsequent studies, significantly informing our understanding of language and cognitive development during the first year of life. Based on experiment 3 of the original Jusczyk et al. study, we tested 9-month-old Dutch infants using the Head-turn Preference Procedure. Unlike the original study, we controlled our stimuli sets for phonotactics, ensuring that the high- and low-frequency syllables were balanced in their place and manner of articulation, differing only in their frequency of occurrence. Our results indicate that, contrary to the original findings and our prediction, the infants tested did not discern high-frequency Dutch syllables from their low-frequency counterparts. This suggests that Dutch infants, while learning to discriminate words from flowing speech, might rely on more linguistic cues than just frequency of occurrence.Show less

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Infants’ Sensitivity to the Syllable Frequencies in Dutch: An extension of Jusczyk et al. (1994)