INFANTS SENSITIVITY TO PHONOTACTIC PATTERNS IN THE NATIVE LANGUAGE

There is increasing evidence that during the latter half of their firs t year, infants begin learning about the organization of sound pattern s in their native language. The present study investigated whether Ame rican infants are sensitive to the frequency with which certain phonet ic patterns appear in English words. Two types of lists of monosyllabl es were presented using the headturn preference procedure. High-probab ility lists contained items with phonetic patterns that occur frequent ly in English words. Low-probability lists were composed of items with phonetic patterns that appear infrequently in English words. Nine-mon th-olds, but not 6-month-olds, listened significantly longer to the hi gh-probability lists. A follow-up experiment indicated that the 9-mont h-olds' preference for the high-probability lists occurs even when the lists are matched in terms of vowel quality. We discuss the implicati ons of this preference for frequently appearing phonetic patterns for word recognition and the development of the mental lexicon. (C) 1994 A cademic Press, Inc.