Referential Labeling Can Facilitate Phonetic Learning in Infancy

All languages employ certain phonetic contrasts when distinguishing words. Infant speech perception is rapidly attuned to these contrasts before many words are learned, thus phonetic attunement is thought to proceed independently of lexical and/or referential knowledge. Here we provide evidence to the contrary. Nine-month-old English-learning infants were trained to perceive a non-native Cantonese tone contrast. Two audiovisual pairings were consistently presented, which highlighted the target contrast (Object A with Tone X; Object B with Tone Y). Tone discrimination was then assessed. Results showed improved tone discrimination if object-tone pairings were perceived as being referential word labels, although this effect was modulated by vocabulary size. Results suggest how lexical and/or referential knowledge could play a role in phonetic attunement.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofReviewedFacult