Infants learn phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience. Chambers, K. E, Onishi, K. H, & Fisher, C. Cognition, 87(2):B69-77, 2003.
abstract   bibtex   
Two experiments investigated whether novel phonotactic regularities, not present in English, could be acquired by 16.5-month-old infants from brief auditory experience. Subjects listened to consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in which particular consonants were artificially restricted to either initial or final position (e.g. /baep/ not /paeb/). In a later head-turn preference test, infants listened longer to new syllables that violated the experimental phonotactic constraints than to new syllables that honored them. Thus, infants rapidly learned phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience and extended them to unstudied syllables, documenting the sensitivity of the infant's language processing system to abstractions over linguistic experience.
@Article{Chambers2003,
  author   = {Kyle E Chambers and Kristine H Onishi and Cynthia Fisher},
  journal  = {Cognition},
  title    = {Infants learn phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience.},
  year     = {2003},
  number   = {2},
  pages    = {B69-77},
  volume   = {87},
  abstract = {Two experiments investigated whether novel phonotactic regularities,
	not present in English, could be acquired by 16.5-month-old infants
	from brief auditory experience. Subjects listened to consonant-vowel-consonant
	syllables in which particular consonants were artificially restricted
	to either initial or final position (e.g. /baep/ not /paeb/). In
	a later head-turn preference test, infants listened longer to new
	syllables that violated the experimental phonotactic constraints
	than to new syllables that honored them. Thus, infants rapidly learned
	phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience and extended
	them to unstudied syllables, documenting the sensitivity of the infant's
	language processing system to abstractions over linguistic experience.},
  keywords = {Acoustic Stimulation, Child Language, Female, Human, Infant, Male, Phonetics, Random Allocation, Speech Perception, Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S., P.H.S., Verbal Learning, 12590043},
}

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