A cross-language comparison of vowel perception in English-learning and German-learning infants
Abstract
Studies of cross-language consonant discrimination have shown a shift from a language-general to a language-specific pattern during the first year of life. Recently, the same pattern of change was observed for English-speaking infants’ discrimination of two non-native vowel contrasts (Polka and Werker, 1994). The present study was designed to provide a more direct assessment of language-specific influences on infant vowel contrast perception. In experiment 1 adults were tested on a German (non-English) contrast, /dut/ versus /dyt/, and an English (non-German) contrast, /dεt/ versus /dæt/. English and German adults discriminated both contrasts with high levels of accuracy in a categorial AXB task. However, results of an identification and rating task showed that, within each non-native vowel contrast, one vowel perceptually matched a native vowel category better than the other. In experiment 2 discrimination of /dut/ versus /dyt/ and /dεt/ versus /dæt/ was examined in English- and German-learning infants in two age groups (6–8 months and 10–12 months) using the conditioned headturn procedure. English and German infants did not differ in their discrimination of either contrast and there were no age differences in discrimination of either contrast for the German or for the English infants. However, in both language groups at both ages, there were clear differences in performance related to the direction in which the vowel change was presented to the infants. For the German contrast, discrimination was significantly poorer when the contrast changed from /dut/ to /dyt/. For the English contrast, discrimination was significantly poorer when the contrast changed from /dæt/ to /dεt/. The directional asymmetries observed here and in other infant vowel studies point to a language-universal perceptual pattern which suggests that vowels produced with extreme articulatory postures serve as perceptual attractors in infant vowel perception.
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The initial perceptual biases shown by infants in tests of categorical perception, as well as asymmetries in perception seen in infancy, produce a contouring of the perceptual space that is universal.
“The important point regarding development is that the initial perceptual biases shown by infants in tests of categorical perception (12–16), as well as asymmetries in perception seen in infancy (80, 81), produce a contouring of the perceptual space that is universal.”
From A new view of language acquisition (2000) · cites this paper as [80]
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Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., & Nelson, T. (2008) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2154 · Cited by 886 · see citing works
Effects of experience on non-native speakers' production and perception of English vowels
Flege, J. E., Bohn, O., & Jang, S. (1997) · Journal of Phonetics · doi:10.1006/jpho.1997.0052 · Cited by 891 · see citing works
“Other L2 vowels may also be identified consistently in terms of a single L1 category, but not be judged as good instances of that category (see, e.g., Polka & Bohn, 1996; Ingram & Park, 1997).”
BackgroundSelf-citationInfants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months
Kuhl, P. K., Stevens, E., Hayashi, A., Deguchi, T., Kiritani, S., & Iverson, P. (2006) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2006.00468.x · Cited by 867 · see citing works
“In tests using vowel contrasts, infants at 6–8 and 10–12 months of age show significant direction effects across age and culture (Polka & Bohn, 1996, 2003).”
MethodResultA new view of language acquisition
Kuhl, P. K. (2000) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.97.22.11850 · Cited by 773 · see citing works
Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Goodell, E. W. (2001) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.1332378 · Cited by 680 · see citing works
“…with declining discrimination of at least some non-native consonants by 8–10 months (e.g., Best et al., 1995; Werker, 1989; Werker et al., 1981; Werker and Lalonde, 1989), and of some non-native vowels by 6– 8 months (Polka and Werker, 1994; cf. Kuhl et al., 1992; but see Polka and Bohn, 1996).”
BackgroundTsao, F.-M., Liu, H.-M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2004) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00726.x · Cited by 588 · see citing works
“Recent tests examined infants’ absolute levels of performance on tests of speech discrimination (e.g., Kuhl, Stevens, et al., 2004; Kuhl, Tsao, & Liu, 2003; Liu, Kuhl, & Tsao, 2003; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Tsao, 2001).”
BackgroundBosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2003) · Language and Speech · doi:10.1177/00238309030460020801 · Cited by 497 · see citing works
“Eight-month-old infants were selected because by this age changes in the perception of vowel sound categories have already been described (Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Polka & Werker, 1994).”
BackgroundMethodPhonotactic and Prosodic Effects on Word Segmentation in Infants
Mattys, S. L., Jusczyk, P. W., Luce, P. A., & Morgan, J. L. (1999) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1006/cogp.1999.0721 · Cited by 441 · see citing works
Language Discrimination by English-Learning 5-Month-Olds: Effects of Rhythm and Familiarity
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“There are also some ind tions that sensitivity to nonnative vowel co t asts declines at an earlier age than for co nants (Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens, Lindblom, 1992; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Polka Werker, 1994).”
BackgroundINFLUENCES ON INFANT SPEECH PROCESSING: Toward a New Synthesis
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1999) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.509 · Cited by 298 · see citing works
“Their work revealed an effect of experience between 4 and 6 months of age, but the full impact of experience was not evident until approximately 10–12 months of age, the same age at which it is found for consonants (but see Polka & Bohn 1996).”
BackgroundNarayan, C. R., Werker, J. F., & Beddor, P. S. (2009) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00898.x · Cited by 253 · see citing works
“Polka and Bohn (1996) suggested that the contrast remained discriminable for English-learning infants for acoustic reasons: the formant differences distinguishing the ⁄ y ⁄ – ⁄ u ⁄ contrast in their study were substantially larger than the formant differences observed in the stimuli used by Polka…”
The role of talker-specific information in word segmentation by infants.
Houston, D. M., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2000) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance · doi:10.1037//0096-1523.26.5.1570 · Cited by 300 · see citing works
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“A modified version of the stimuli used by Polka et al. (2001) were used in this study. In Polka et al. (2001), the stimuli consisted of two sets of naturally produced English minimal word pairs, /bot-vot/ (“boat”-“vote”) and /doz- oz/ (“doze”-“those”) produced by a monolingual English speaker.”
BackgroundMethodResultInfluentialSelf-citationWhen does native language input affect phonetic perception? The precocious case of lexical tone
Yeung, H. H., Chen, K. H., & Werker, J. F. (2012) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.09.004 · Cited by 193 · see citing works
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“within-category vowel pairs (Polka et al. 2009). Work is in progress to determine if these predictions are also supported in behavioral discrimination of these vowel stimuli. However, NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Phonetics. A definitive version was subs…”
BackgroundSelf-citationMethods for Scalar‐on‐Function Regression
Reiss, P. T., Goldsmith, J., Shang, H. L., & Ogden, R. T. (2016) · International Statistical Review · doi:10.1111/insr.12163 · Cited by 192 · see citing works
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BackgroundResultInfluentialSelf-citationNine-Month-Olds' Attention to Sound Similarities in Syllables
Jusczyk, P. W., Goodman, M. B., & Baumann, A. (1999) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1006/jmla.1998.2605 · Cited by 182 · see citing works
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“…speech perception Gottfried’s (1984) study, as well as all other studies of front rounded vowels, were performed with vowels either in isolation (Rochet, 1995; Stevens et al., 1969) or in alveolar context (Best et al., 1996; Flege, 1987; Flege & Hillenbrand, 1984; Polka, 1995; Polka & Bohn, 1996).”
BackgroundA cross-language comparison of /d /–/ð / perception: Evidence for a new developmental pattern
Polka, L., Colantonio, C., & Sundara, M. (2001) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.1362689 · Cited by 181 · see citing works
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Perceptual Assimilation and Discrimination of Non-Native Vowel Contrasts
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“Two of the latter studies examined perception of two German vowel contrasts, /u/-/y/ and /ʊ/-/ʏ/, by English-speaking monolinguals [Polka, 1995; Polka and Bohn, 1996].”
ResultPerceptual attunement in vowels: A meta‐analysis
Tsuji, S., & Cristià, A. (2013) · Developmental Psychobiology · doi:10.1002/dev.21179 · Cited by 143 · see citing works
The Infant's Auditory World: Hearing, Speech, and the Beginnings of Language
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VOCABULARY SIZE IS ASSOCIATED WITH SECOND-LANGUAGE VOWEL PERCEPTION PERFORMANCE IN ADULT LEARNERS
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“…intact and accessible in later SLA—for example, the speech learning model (Flege, 1995 ); PAM-L2 (Best, 1994 , 1995 ; Best & Tyler, 2007 ); natural referent vowel framework (Bohn & Polka, 2001 ; Polka & Bohn, 1996 , 2003 ); automatic selective perception model (Strange, 2006 , 2007a , 2007b ).”
Speech Perception and Spoken Word Recognition: Past and Present
Jusczyk, P., & Luce, P. A. (2002) · Ear and Hearing · doi:10.1097/00003446-200202000-00002 · Cited by 144 · see citing works
“Moreover, infants display similar asymmetries for vowel contrasts not present in their native language (Polka & Bohn, 1996).”
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Pegg, J. E., & Werker, J. F. (1997) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.420137 · Cited by 128 · see citing works
Linguistic influences in adult perception of non-native vowel contrasts
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Self-citationProduction of phonetic and phonological contrast by heritage speakers of Mandarin
Chang, C. B., Yao, Y., Haynes, E. F., & Rhodes, R. (2011) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.3569736 · Cited by 117 · see citing works
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BackgroundResultAcoustic and perceptual similarity of North German and American English vowels
Strange, W., Bohn, O., Trent, S. A., et al. (2004) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.1687832 · Cited by 115 · see citing works
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“Previous cross-language research using the AXB discrimination test has often yielded near-ceiling scores for vowels even when tokens drawn from contrasting foreign vowel categories were classified as instances of a single L1 category Best et al., 1996; Polka, 1995; Polka and Bohn, 1996 .”
BackgroundMethodEffects of the distribution of acoustic cues on infants' perception of sibilants
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Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development
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- Self-citation
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InfluentialLiu, L., & Kager, R. (2015) · International Journal of Bilingualism · doi:10.1177/1367006914566082 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
“This effect is also found in English infants of 4–6 months whose perception represent language-specific experience when discriminating the German / u /-/ y / and /u/-/y/ contrasts (Polka & Werker, 1994, but see Polka & Bohn, 1996 for a successful non-native contrast discrimination).”
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“Asymmetric discrimination has been previously documented in young infants both for vowel quality (Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Polka & Werker, 1994; Swoboda, Kass, Morse, & Leavitt, 1978; see also Polka & Bohn, 2003, for review) and for consonantal contrasts (Kuhl et al., 2006).”
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Fast phonetic learning occurs already in 2-to-3-month old infants: an ERP study
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“…of the three predictions that we derived from previous literature in the Introduction: the peripherality-related asymmetry predicted on the basis of Polka and Bohn (1996), namely that the MMR should be larger if the standard is [ε], was not found (main effect of Standard Vowel: p = 0.98); a…”
InfluentialLuche, C. D., Durrant, S., Poltrock, S., & Floccia, C. (2015) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2015.05.005 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
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Stimulus presentation order and the perception of lexical tones in Cantonese
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Self-citationA perceptual equivalent of the labial-coronal effect in the first year of life
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“Effects of the native language appear around 6 months of age for vowel perception Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka and Bohn, 1996; Polka and Werker, 1994 and around 10 months of age for consonant perception Rivera-Gaxiola et al. 2005; Werker and Tees, 1984 .”
BackgroundPerceptual Improvement of Lexical Tones in Infants: Effects of Tone Language Experience
Tsao, F. (2017) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00558 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
“…of phonetic segments, studies on consonant and vowel perception have reported an improvement in the discrimination of phonetic segments in infants’ native languages between 6 and 12 months of age (Polka and Bohn, 1996; Kuhl et al., 2006; Tsao et al., 2006; Narayan et al., 2010; Pons et al., 2012).”
BackgroundDo Infants Really Learn Phonetic Categories?
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“…are exceptions to this pattern (Best et al., 1988; L. Liu & Kager, 2014, 2016; Mattock & Burnham, 2006; Mazuka et al., 2014; Mugitani et al., 2009; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Polka et al., 2001; Sundara et al., 2006; Yeung et al., 2013), it is clear that infants ’ perception becomes more native-like as…”
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“In this case, 6–8 and 10–12 month-old human infants found the discrimination easier if the change occurred from /E/ to /æ/, whereas birds found the change in the reverse direction easier to discriminate (Hienz et al., 1981; Polka and Bohn, 1996).”
BackgroundSpeech Perception by 6‐to 8‐Month‐Olds in the Presence of Distracting Sounds
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“Some investigators~e.g., Sussman and Laucker-Moran 1995; Polka and Bohn, 1996! have reported that direction o change of the vowel formants may affect discrimination sults.”
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“By 6–8 months, infants’ discrimination of non-native vowel contrasts is declining (e.g., Polka & Bohn, 1996, 2003; Polka & Werker, 1994), but there is no evidence of a decline in discrimination of non-native consonants until several months later (for a review, see Werker & Tees, 2005; also section…”
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“For example, Polka and Bohn (1996) report that L1 Canadian English speakers perceive German /u/ to be a better exemplar of English /u/, than German /y/, despite the fact that German /y/ and English /u/ are acoustically closer.”
BackgroundThe perceptual foundations of phonological development
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“For instance, an asymmetry predicted by Polka and Bohn [40,41] can make discrimination easier if relatively central vowels (in the twodimensional vowel space defined by F1 and F2; e.”
BackgroundPerceptual Reorganization of Lexical Tones: Effects of Age and Experimental Procedure
Götz, A., Yeung, H. H., Krasotkina, A., Schwarzer, G., & Höhle, B. (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00477 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
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“…but by 6–8 months this ability begins to decline for many vowel contrasts not present in the native language environment (Polka and Werker, 1994; cf. Polka and Bohn, 1996), and by 10– 12 months sensitivity to most non-native consonant contrasts similarly declines (Werker and Tees, 1983, 1984; cf.”
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Asymmetries in Early Word Recognition: The Case of Stops and Fricatives
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“For instance, infants may detect a change from /y/ to /u/, but not a change from /u/ to /y/ (Polka & Bohn, 1996).”
BackgroundDirectional asymmetries reveal a universal bias in adult vowel perception
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Self-citationChládková, K., & Escudero, P. (2012) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.3674991 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Cross‐Language and Second Language Speech Perception
Bohn, O. (2017) · doi:10.1002/9781118829516.ch10 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
Self-citationUnderstanding the developing sound system: interactions between sounds and words
Curtin, S. L., & Zamuner, T. S. (2014) · Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science · doi:10.1002/wcs.1307 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Effect of Vowel Identity and Onset Asynchrony on Concurrent Vowel Identification
Hedrick, M. S., & Madix, S. G. (2008) · Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0094 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Baby steps to learning language
Werker, J. F. (2003) · The Journal of Pediatrics · doi:10.1067/s0022-3476(03)00403-7 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Ramachers, S., Brouwer, S. M., & Fikkert, P. (2017) · Journal of Child Language · doi:10.1017/s0305000917000228 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages
Pan, L., Ke, H., & Styles, S. J. (2022) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-022-08557-7 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
Lanwermeyer, M., Henrich, K., Rocholl, M. J., Schnell, H. T., Werth, A., Herrgen, J., & Schmidt, J. E. (2016) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00739 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
“For infants, the discrimination of a vowel change presented in the direction from a less peripheral to a more peripheral vowel, i.e., closer to the limits or corners of the vowel space, is significantly better than in the reversed direction (see also Polka and Werker, 1994; Polka and Bohn, 1996).”
Liu, L., Ong, J. H., Tuninetti, A., & Escudero, P. (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00162 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
Determining Cross‐Linguistic Phonological Similarity Between Segments
Chang, C. B. (2015) · doi:10.1002/9781118555491.ch9 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
“For example, native speakers of Canadian English judge German lui to be more similar than German Iyl to English lui, despite the fact that German Iyl is the acoustically closer vowel to English lui (Polka and Bohn 1996).”
BackgroundWang, X., & Chen, J. (2020) · Languages · doi:10.3390/languages5020020 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“This universal perceptual pattern undergoes a profound change due to increased experience with their first language in the later half of the first year in life (Best 1994; Polka and Bohn 1996; Strange 1995; Werker 1994; Werker and Polka 1993).”
BackgroundLost and Found: Decline and Reemergence of Non-Native Vowel Discrimination in the First Year of Life
de Klerk, M., de Bree, E. H., Kerkhoff, A., & Wijnen, F. N. K. (2018) · Language Learning and Development · doi:10.1080/15475441.2018.1497490 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“Polka and Bohn (1996) found that both English- and German-learning infants showed better discrimination when the habituation stimulus was/y/than when it was/u/.”
BackgroundResultInfluentialA lexical advantage in four-year-old children's word repetition
Cychosz, M., Erskine, M. E., Munson, B., & Edwards, J. (2020) · Journal of Child Language · doi:10.1017/s0305000920000094 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“However, infants’ performance may be more variable than adults’ (Polka & Bohn, 1996).”
BackgroundInfant dialect discrimination.
Phan, J., & Houston, D. M. (2009) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.4784764 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
“Infants’ discrimination of vowel contrasts is also evident early in development (Trehub 1973; Trehub 1976; Bertoncini, Bijeljac-Babic et al. 1987; Kuhl, Williams et al. 1992; Polka and Werker 1994; Polka and Bohn 1996).”
BackgroundChan, K. Y., & Hall, M. D. (2019) · Journal of Phonetics · doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2019.100919 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
A universal bias in adult vowel perception – By ear or by eye
Masapollo, M., Polka, L., & Ménard, L. (2017) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.001 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Self-citationPhonological representations in children's native and non-native lexicon
Simon, E., Sjerps, M. J., & Fikkert, P. (2013) · Bilingualism Language and Cognition · doi:10.1017/s1366728912000764 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“…role of the mental lexicon is limited, asymmetries in the perception of phoneme pairs have been observed in a large number of studies (Best & Faber, 2000; Bohn & Polka, 2001; Polka & Bohn, 1996; Polka & Werker, 1994; Slobodan, Kiss, Morse & Leavitt, 1978), reviewed in Polka and Bohn (2003, 2011).”
Background[Phonetic discrimination ability of a native vowel contrast in preterm infants].
Montiu, M. F., & Galcerán, L. B. (2010) · PubMed · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Perception of American English vowels by sequential Spanish–English bilinguals
García, P. B., & Froud, K. (2016) · Bilingualism Language and Cognition · doi:10.1017/s1366728916000808 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“…that the apparent perceptual salience of /ɑ/ is related to its representational properties is supported by the Natural Vowel Referent hypothesis (Polka & Bohn, 1996; 2003; 2010) and Dispersion-Focalization Theory (Schwartz et al., 2005), as discussed; however, a future study specifically…”
BackgroundBerti, L. C., Falavigna, A. E., dos Santos, J. B., et al. (2012) · Jornal da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia · doi:10.1590/s2179-64912012000400010 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Best, C. T. (2017) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9781118829516.ch21 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
- Authors
- Polka, L., & Bohn, O.-S.
- Affiliations
- McGill University (CA)
- Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (DE)
- Venue
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
- Publisher
- Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
- Published
- 1996-07-01
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 577-592
- ISSN
- 0001-4966 (ISSN-L)
- 1520-8524
- OpenAlex
- W1981980357
- Cited by
- 171
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 5.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- vowel discrimination, cross-linguistic comparison, English-learning infants, directional asymmetry, first language acquisition
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Germany, Humans, Infant, Language, Speech Acoustics, Speech Discrimination Tests, Speech Perception, Verbal Learning
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