Escudero, P. 1 , Best, C. T. 1 & Kitamura, C. 2
1 MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney
2 School of Social Sciences and Psychology , University of Western Sydney
Children under 17 months have substantial difficulty in learning to associate picture referents to novel words that form phonologically minimal pairs, i.e., differing in a single consonant (e.g. 'bin' versus 'din'). However, they can associate picture referents to some minimal vowel pairs, namely 'deet' versus 'dit', suggesting early word learning is affected by the type of phoneme contrast involved. In previous studies the novel words were spoken in the infants? native regional accent (often Canadian or American English). We examine whether accent differences in the production of novel minimal vowel pairs affect early word learning success. An experience-based attunement perspective would predict higher levels of success for native than non-native accents, while an acoustic/articulatory perspective would predict that the accent with the largest phonetic differences would yield more success regardless of nativeness. Australian English 15-month-olds (N = 48) were presented with 'deet', 'dit' and 'doot' spoken by either an Australian English (native accent) or a Canadian English (non-native) female. During the learning trials, toddlers saw a moving object on the screen and heard 'deet'. After habituation, they were presented with three test trials, all of which showed the same moving object but played either the same word ('deet') or different words ('dit' and 'doot'). Test trial order was counterbalanced across infants. A repeated-measures ANOVA (Word) x Accent x Test Order revealed a main effect of Word, qualified by a Word x Accent interaction. Australian toddlers exposed to Canadian stimuli looked longer at the switch ('dit' and 'doot') than at the same trials ('deet'), while no word differences were found for toddlers exposed to Australian stimuli. Thus, accent differences in vowels indeed affect early word learning. Moreover, accent-specific acoustic/articulatory properties and how they compare to the learners? phonetic categories appear to be stronger predictors of word learning success than language experience.