Targeted adaptation in infants following live exposure to an accented talker.

摘要: Infants struggle to understand familiar words spoken in unfamiliar accents. Here, we examine whether accent exposure facilitates accent-specific adaptation. Two types of pre-exposure were examined: video-based (i.e., listening pre-recorded stories; Experiment 1) and live interaction (reading books with an experimenter; Experiments 2 3). After exposure, Canadian English-learning 15- 18-month-olds failed recognize accent. However, after face-to-face a Mandarin-accented talker, infants showed enhanced recognition for produced Mandarin English compared Australian English. talker not similarly facilitated, perhaps due the lower vocabulary scores assigned condition. Thus, can facilitate adaptation, but this ability is fragile young likely influenced by size specific mapping between speaker listener's phonological system.