PSYCH 9B Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Phoneme, Pacifier, Habituation
Document Summary
Many phonemes overlap across languages, but not all. R" and l" phonemes in english don"t have meaning by themselves, but they change the meanings of words. In chinese, r" and l" are not used phonemes and they do not. How would we even know what newborns understand? change the meaning of words. One of few innate skills or reflexes in newborns is sucking. Suck when interested, nervous, tired, or surprised, and when something is novel. Change phoneme [d] and present repeatedly, see if infant still bored . 4 day old french children heard repeated french sounds monitored sucking. Switched to russian sounds, see if sucking rate changed. Switched to english, see if sucking rate changed. 4 day old french children could discriminate phonemes in their language from foreign languages. By approximately 1 year of age, french children could not. Infants (not adults) can perceive most and perhaps all phonemes found in human language.
