Misp_MA_handout.pdf

As infants begin to learn words with earnest in their second year of life, they must not only learn which distinct combination of sounds maps onto the label of an object but also be flexible in this knowledge to account for variability in the signal (e.g. speakers, accents, etc.). Over a decade of research has investigated the phonological detail with which infants encode familiar words by examining their recognition of correctly pronounced (dog) and mispronounced (tog) words. Using a meta-analytic approach, we capture how sensitivity to mispronunciations changes as infants mature.