The influence of infant-directed speech on vowel categorization and phonological rule learning
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2015-07-01
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en
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This MSc thesis investigated the influence of infant-directed speech (IDS) on vowel
categorization and phonological rule learning, using both computational modeling and a
behavioral experiment. Previous research by Adriaans and Swingley (2012) investigated the
effect of using tokens with prosodic emphasis on automatic clustering of vowel sets into
categories. We have replicated and extended theses findings by using data from fourteen
French speakers, both male and female. The results showed that tokens with prosodic
emphasis improve the distributional learning of vowel categories in French, even when data
of multiple speakers is used, suggesting that more IDS-like tokens could potentially aid in
learning phonetic categories. Next, we investigated whether the learning of phonological rules
is facilitated by IDS as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) with an artificial grammar
experiment that could test the learning of two phonological rules at the same time, and
independent of each other. The findings suggested that IDS might facilitate phonological rule
learning. Finally, we built a computational model using neural networks to mimic the
artificial grammar experiment. We found that the model did not learn the phonological rules
from the behavioral experiment, in contrast to the participants of the experiment. Therefor, we
could not answer the question whether IDS aids the learning of phonological rules by the
computational model.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen