Development of Phonological Constancy: 19-Month-Olds, but Not 15-Month-Olds, Identify Words in a Non-Native Regional Accent.

PHONOLOGICAL awareness; CHILDREN'S language; PHONETICS; STRESS (Linguistics); PRONUNCIATION; CHILDREN; EYE movement measurements; ANALYSIS of variance; WORD recognition

By 12 months, children grasp that a phonetic change to a word can change its identity ( phonological distinctiveness). However, they must also grasp that some phonetic changes do not ( phonological constancy). To test development of phonological constancy, sixteen 15-month-olds and sixteen 19-month-olds completed an eye-tracking task that tracked their gaze to named versus unnamed images for familiar words spoken in their native ( Australian) and an unfamiliar non-native ( Jamaican) regional accent of English. Both groups looked longer at named than unnamed images for Australian pronunciations, but only 19-month-olds did so for Jamaican pronunciations, indicating that phonological constancy emerges by 19 months. Vocabulary size predicted 15-month-olds' identifications for the Jamaican pronunciations, suggesting vocabulary growth is a viable predictor for phonological constancy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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