Predicting developmental shifts in perceptual weighting schemes

Recent models of developmental changes in speech perception suggest that the weights assigned to acoustic properties change as children gain experience with a native language. Empirical evidence supports this position, but few suggestions have been offered as to what guides this shift. These three experiments were designed to improve our ability to predict how perceptual weighting schemes change with development. The specific hypothesis explored was twofold: (1) the weight assigned by adults to any one acoustic property differs across phonetic environments according to how informative that property is in each environment; and (2) the weight assigned by children to any one acoustic property differs less across phonetic environments because children have not fully learned the patterns of covariation between phonetic informativeness and environment for each property. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings of age-related differences in the weights assigned to noise spectra and formant transitions in labeling of syllable-initial fricatives (/s/ or /[symbol: see text]/). In experiment 2 the variation in F3-onset frequency associated with place of fricative constriction was eliminated. This property differs more (i.e., is more informative) in /u/ than in /a/. Accordingly adults' transition effect was reduced more for /u/ than for /a/ from experiment 1. Children's transition effect was similarly reduced across vowel environments. In experiment 3, F3-onset frequency was appropriately manipulated for both vowels, and adults transition effect increased more for /u/ than for /a/ from experiment 2. The increase in children's transition effect was more similar across vowels. We conclude that the children had not fully learned how information provided by F3 transitions varies across /a/ and /u/ environments, and suggest that developmental weighting shifts may be guided by children learning the relation between phonetic informativeness and environment.