2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
How do Japanese-learning infants learn new words from fluent speech?
| Project/Area Number |
18K13379
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| Research Institution | Institute of Physical and Chemical Research |
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Principal Investigator |
西林 レオ竜起 国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 脳神経科学研究センター, 研究員 (10814204)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | Psycholinguistics / Developmental Psychology / Speech segmentation / Consonant bias |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Three behavioral experiments were conducted. The aim is to observe whether Japanese-learning infants can segment speech and whether they possess a consonant bias as infants acquiring French, Spanish or English. This bias is thought to facilitate early language acquisition and even rhythmic/phonological bootstrapping.
The first experiment showed that Japanese-learning 8-month-olds are able to segment 2-syllable 3-mora words. This is the first time such young Japanese babies were shown to be able to segment words. The second experiment showed that they possess a consonant bias in segmenting and recognizing segmented word forms: consonants, rather than vowels, help infants recognizing words heard within the speech stream. Both findings in Experiments 1 & 2 raise the question of whether Japanese infants follow the same developmental trajectories as infants acquiring other languages.
The third experiment that I am currently conducting focuses on Japanese-learning 6-month-olds. Its goal is to determine more precisely at what age segmentation abilities emerge and whether the number of morae, rather than the number of syllables, play an important role in the earlier stages of language development.
These results were presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development in November 2018. Furthermore, in January 2019, a business trip to Paris allowed me to compare and share the results obtained in Riken.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Since the beginning of the Kakenhi, the study is progressing smoothly as I was able to complete (almost) 3 experiments. A total of 64 babies were tested and preliminary results were presented during an international conference, in Boston.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The next steps are already implemented. The ongoing third experiment will allow to determine whether we will need to test even younger infants (4 months) or changing word types used in the previous experiments (2-mora 2-syllable instead of 3-mora 2-syllable) as it is of importance to determine the role of the mora, the rhythmic unit of Japanese language.
It is planned to start writing a paper of the two previous experiments and submit it at the end of the year to a peer-reviewed journal such as Cognition.
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| Causes of Carryover |
An additional trip to Paris was scheduled during the 2018-2019 fiscal year. However, it did not go as planned, due to demonstrations taking place in Paris and due to non-matching availabilities between INCC (French lab) and our team. Thus, this trip will be postponed to this fiscal year (2019-2020).
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