PSYCH 9B Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Phoneme, Word Formation, Pacifier
Document Summary
Many phonemes overlap across languages, but not all. Ex: r and l phonemes in english don"t have meaning by themselves, but they change the meanings of words. Red, led: in chinese, r and l are not used phonemes and they do not change the meanings of the words. One of the innate skills or reflexes in newborns is sucking: suck when interested, nervous, tired, or surprised, and when something is novel. Habituation paradigm: give new born pacifier that monitors sucking rate, present phoneme [b] repeatedly until infant get bored , change phoneme [d] and present repeatedly, see if infant still is bored . Result: sucking rate during b: at first high, then decreases, presenting d: recognized them and their sucking rate get high, later habituate again. Mehler: 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, result:
