Ratnage, P. 1 , Granjon, L. 2 , Nazzi, T. 2 & Floccia, C. 1
1 Plymouth University
2 Paris Descartes University
Past research has revealed that cross-linguistic differences, based on the lexical or phonological properties of an infant?s native language, exist in the developmental origins of the consonant bias in lexical processing. For example, French-learning 5-month-olds, but not British English, can detect vowel but not consonant changes in their own name. The present study examined how British English learning 5-month-olds processed phonetic and acoustic information changes in a word familiar to them (?mummy?). Using a head-turn-preference procedure, infants? orientation times towards the familiar word versus manipulations of either the word?s phonetic information (i.e. changes in the initial consonant or vowel) or its intensity (i.e. changes in the energy of the initial consonant or vowel) were measured. As found in previous research, the preliminary results suggest that British infants failed to recognize consonant and vowel changes in a familiar word. However, they were sensitive to a change in intensity in the initial vowel (p =.05), but not the initial consonant. These findings suggest that British English learning 5-month-olds pay more attention to acoustic information (here, intensity) over phonetic cues, perhaps because of the critical role of intensity in the stress structure of English.