Language Beats or Statistics – which sounds go together?
In this study, we are interested in what kinds of language cues your baby is using to find words, and whether babies who are learning different languages use different kinds of cues. You and your baby will listen to two languages that have different kinds of patterns in them, and we will use an eyetracker to see how your baby responds to those different patterns.
If you have a baby who is in the age range of 6 to 9 months and are interested in participating, please sign up for our registry, or email us at langdev@audiospeech.ubc.ca
Sounds and Statistics – which patterns do you like?
This study examines how babies use the statistics of what they see and hear to understand the world around them. Previous work has shown that babies pay attention to how frequently sounds occur, and the patterns that sounds can make with neighbouring sounds. Eventually this research may help us determine what situations and environments are best for helping babies learn about language!
If you have a baby who is in the age range of 6 to 12 months and are interested in participating, please sign up for our registry, or email us at langdev@audiospeech.ubc.ca
Previous Studies
Learning words from unfamiliar speech: One of the most exciting milestones in a child’s development is when they say their first words. But there is so much your baby has had to learn to get to this point – how to move their lips and tongue in the right way to make the right sounds, what kind of meaning goes with what sounds, and what sounds go together to make up the word in the first place! Scientists believe that one way we solve this last problem is by subconsciously tracking how frequently sounds go together. We call this ‘statistical learning’. In a series of studies, we have asked whether babies can use this ability across different types of language and non-linguistic sounds. We have found that infants are more sensitive to statistics when the sounds they hear are artificially constructed, but that when sounds are more natural, they may be more attuned to different kinds of language cues. Much of our work in the lab continues to investigate these language-learning mechanisms and puzzles!
Black, A., & Bergmann, C. (2017). Quantifying infants’ statistical word segmentation: A meta-analysis. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 39).
Language and Development Lab 