Götz, A. & Höhle, B.
Universität Potsdam
Findings on perceptual reorganization on lexical tones are displaying an inhomogeneous picture. For instance, Mattock et al. (2008) showed perceptual narrowing for English-learning infants between 6- and 9-months on Thai rising and low tones. Similarly, Yeung et al. (2013) demonstrated perceptual reorganization between 4- and 9-months for Cantonese high-rising and mid-level tones in English learning infants. In contrast, Liu & Kager (2014) showed divergent results for Dutch children: Infants between 5- and 18-months discriminated Mandarin high-level and high-falling tones. A perceptual decline between 5- and 9-months was only found in this study when using synthesized stimuli with smaller pitch distances. However under this condition, 18-month-olds showed a perceptual enhancement.
Our study pursued the U-shaped curve found by Liu and Kager using the natural stimuli from Yeung et al. (2013) with German infants between 6- and 18-months. Infants from parents who grew up in pitch accented dialect regions of German were excluded. Using two different experimental paradigms (familiarization and habituation) our results suggest that 6- and 18-month-olds discriminate between Cantonese high-rising and mid-level tones (both p = .02) while 9-month-olds don?t (p = 0.78). Effects of experimental methods, acoustic salience and properties of the native language will be discussed.