Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Dec;55(6):1626-39.
doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2012/11-0250). Epub 2012 Apr 5.

Identification of prelinguistic phonological categories

Heather L Ramsdell  1 , D Kimbrough Oller, Eugene H Buder, Corinna A Ethington, Lesya Chorna
Affiliations

Identification of prelinguistic phonological categories

Heather L Ramsdell et al. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2012 Dec.

Abstract

Purpose: The prelinguistic infant's babbling repertoire of syllables--the phonological categories that form the basis for early word learning--is noticed by caregivers who interact with infants around them. Prior research on babbling has not explored the caregiver's role in recognition of early vocal categories as foundations for word learning. In the present work, the authors begin to address this gap.

Method: The authors explored vocalizations produced by 8 infants at 3 ages (8, 10, and 12 months) in studies illustrating identification of phonological categories through caregiver report, laboratory procedures simulating the caregiver's natural mode of listening, and the more traditional laboratory approach (phonetic transcription).

Results: Caregivers reported small repertoires of syllables for their infants. Repertoires of similar size and phonetic content were discerned in the laboratory by judges who simulated the caregiver's natural mode of listening. However, phonetic transcription with repeated listening to infant recordings yielded repertoire sizes that vastly exceeded those reported by caregivers and naturalistic listeners.

Conclusions: The results suggest that caregiver report and naturalistic listening by laboratory staff can provide a new way to explore key characteristics of early infant vocal categories, a way that may provide insight into later speech and language development.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of different syllable types as determined by reports from caregivers, naturalistic listening (NL), and phonetic transcription (T). This is a summary of the inventory results from the three studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Adolph KE, Robinson SR, Young JW, Gill-Alvarez F. What is the shape of developmental change? Psychological Review. 2008;115:527–543. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alford AR. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of Memphis; TN: 2006. Procedures for discerning syllabic templates in babbling: How infants form phonological categories.
    1. Atkinson K, MacWhinney B, Stoel C. An experiment in the recognition of babbling. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development. 1970;5:1–8.
    1. Ball M, Müller N, Klopfenstein M, Rutter B. The importance of narrow phonetic transcription for highly unintelligible speech: Some examples. Logopedics, Phoniatrics, Vocology. 2009;34:84–90. - PubMed
    1. Bloom K. Quality of adult vocalizations affects the quality of infant vocalizations. Journal of Child Language. 1988;15:469–480. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources