Robin Panneton

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi‐Oi‐Oi: Infants love an Australian accent

This study examines infant’s attention to dialect differences following Nazzi et al.’s [J. Mem. Lang., 43, 1–19 (2000)] finding that American 5‐month‐olds can discriminate British‐ and American‐English. Using a serial preference task, 48 6‐month‐old Australian and American infants heard sentence sets spoken in Australian‐ and American‐English. Results showed that at 6 months, American infants listen longer to Australian than American sentences, but Australian infants show no preference. By 8 months, American infants also show no preference. The developmental lag suggests Australian infants have more exposure to the American dialect (e.g., television programs) than American infants to the Australian dialect. Thus, it is predicted, with less linguistic experience, Australian 3‐month‐olds will show a dialect preference comparable to American 6‐month‐olds. Data from 14 3‐month‐olds support this hypothesis; moreover, they also listen longer to Australian than American sentences. Together the results imply that...

Development of Speech Perception

During infancy, interactions with caretakers provide young humans with opportunities to discover important aspects of their world, including ways in which they and others communicate. In the current view, “communication” involves dynamic, real-time processing of multiple sources of information arising both within and between participants, directing attention, enabling co-action, and enriching understanding of the surrounding world (Hollich et al. 2000; Locke 2001).

Unearthing the Developmental and Intergenerational Dynamics of Stress in Parent and Child Functioning

The current volume represents some of the state-of-the-art research, theory, and practice addressing parenting stress and its connections with children’s development. The three major sections of this book represent work examining: the sociocultural and individual (parent and child) contributors to parenting stress, the consequences of parenting stress for children’s adaptive and maladaptive development and the parenting they exhibit and experience with the next generation; and pathways to coping and management of stress through enhanced self-regulation and utilization of social and personal resources. Together, the theories and empirical research findings that are presented convey the importance of examining individuals and their development within systems in and between families and generations. Increasingly, the means to that end will require collaborative multidisciplinary inquiry that integrates levels of analysis, from molecules to individuals, and families to societies.

Visual speech information improves discrimination of non‐native phonemes in late infancy.

Initially, human infants are able to discriminate a change from one speech phoneme to another, whether or not the speech contrasts are native or foreign. By the end of the first postnatal year, the ease with which infants discriminate non‐native phonemes diminishes, indicating a progressive attunement toward language‐relevant speech. However, studies in this area have employed procedures lacking dynamic bimodal information (e.g., faces and voices). Given rapid improvements in visual perception across the first postnatal year, as well as a strong propensity to look at and process faces, it is possible that infants would benefit from visual speech in both native and non‐native perception. Across two experiments, discrimination of auditory plus visual Hindi phoneme contrasts was studied in 11‐month‐olds (English‐learning, using digital movies of female Hindi speakers). Several conditions were contrasted: (a) face plus voice using infant‐directed speech (IDS); (b) face plus voice using adult‐directed speech (...

Preverbal Development and Speech Perception

During infancy, natural and frequent interactions with caregivers provide young humans with opportunities to discover many aspects of their worlds, including (but not limited to) information about themselves, information about others, information about objects, and information about processes that act on each of these sources. This article focuses on general characteristics of linguistic awareness, before infants become fully productive users of language. Culling research from behavioral and neurophysiological studies, we discuss prenatal exposure to maternal sounds, early biases toward faces and voices, emerging awareness of native language structure, and the integration of language into co-occurring systems (e.g., emotion expression and regulation) during this exciting period of development.