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Category: Project

Description: The current study will examine speech sound discrimination in Norwegian 6-month-old infants using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Two vowel contrasts will be tested: one native /y/-/i/, and one non-native, Southern British /ʌ/-/æ/. Infants will first hear one consonant-vowel syllable repeatedly (e.g., /by/), and after having habituated to it, they will hear four test trials. Two of these trials will contain the habituated syllable, and the other two will also introduce a novel syllable with the contrasting vowel (e.g., /bi/). If infants have longer looks to the test trials with the novel syllable compared to the habituated syllable, we suggest that they are able to detect the change in vowel identity (e.g., from /y/ to /i/), The same procedure will be adopted for the non-native vowel contrast. We expect discrimination of the native vowel contrast, and, given that perceptual attunement towards the speech sounds of the native language occurs between 8 to 10 months, we also expect discrimination of the non-native vowel contrasts.