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An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception

  • Barbara L. Davis and Peter F. MacNeilage
Published/Copyright: August 22, 2000

Abstract

Understanding the potential relationships between perception and production is crucial to explanation of the nature of early speech acquisition. The ‘embodiment’ perspective suggests that mental activity in general cannot be understood outside of the context of body activities. Indeed, universal motor factors seem to be more responsible for the distribution of early production preferences regarding consonant place and manner, and use of the vowel space than the often considerable cross-language differences in input available to the perceptual system. However, there is evidence for a perceptual basis to the establishment of a language-appropriate balance of oral-to-nasal output by the beginning of babbling, illustrating the necessary contribution of ‘extrinsic’ perceptual information to acquisition. In terms of representations, at least one assumption that segmental units underlying either perception or production in early phases of acquisition may be inappropriate. Our work on production has shown that the dominant early organizational structure is a relatively unitary open-close ‘frame’ produced by mandibular oscillation. Consideration of the role of ‘intrinsic’ (self-produced) perceptual information suggests that this frame may be an important basis for perceptual as well as production organization.


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Published Online: 2000-08-22
Published in Print: 2000-12-01

© 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Special Section
  2. Title Page
  3. Foreword
  4. Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
  5. Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
  6. Emotive Transforms
  7. The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
  8. The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
  9. Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
  10. Perceptual Processing
  11. Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
  12. General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
  13. Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
  14. Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
  15. Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
  16. Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
  17. The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
  18. Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
  19. En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
  20. An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
  21. Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
  22. The Construction of a First Phonology
  23. Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
  24. Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
  25. Commentary
  26. Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
  27. Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
  28. Paper
  29. Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
  30. Further Section
  31. Publications Björn Lindblom
  32. Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
  33. Contents Vol. 57, 2000
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