2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Study on development of word segmentation abilities in Japanese infants

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19730473
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Experimental psychology
Research Institution	The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
Principal Investigator	HORIE Ryota The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, 望月理論生物学研究室, 協力研究員 (60327690)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Keywords	乳児 / 単語分節化 / 日本語 / 統計学習実験 / 馴化後選好振り向き法 / 人工語 / 特殊拍 / 事象関連電位
Research Abstract	In this study, we found that Japanese infants did not show word segmentation abilities stably by learning transitional probability between supra-segments (statistical learning), by which 8 months old infants in English-speaking countries showed the abilities in previous studies, and that their segmentation is depended on sound stimuli. Instead of the statistical learning, we found that human adults have ability to extract deterministic causality embedded in continuous variation in sound sequences. We also established experimental techniques for stable measurement of EEG from awaked infants.