Aslin R N, Pisoni D B, Hennessy B L, Perey A J
Child Dev. 1981;52(4):1135-45.
Discrimination of voice onset time (VOT) by 6--12-month-old infants was examined in 2 experiments. An operant head-turning technique assessed discrimination along a synthetic VOT continuum ranging from -70 msec to +70 msec. Infants from an English-speaking environment provided reliable within-subject evidence for discrimination of VOT contrasts located at both the plus and minus regions of the VOT continuum. These results provide strong evidence that infants from an English-speaking environment are capable of discriminating VOT contrasts that are not phonemic in English. Threshold delta VOT values indicated that the infants were more sensitive to VOT differences in the plus region of the VOT continuum than in the minus region. Threshold delta VOT values from English-speaking adults indicated greater sensitivity at every location along the VOT continuum. In addition, the adults showed heightened sensitivity to VOT differences near the voiced-voiceless boundary in the plus region of the VOT continuum, a finding that was not evident in the infants' data.
在两项实验中，研究了6至12个月大婴儿对语音起始时间（VOT）的辨别能力。采用操作性转头技术，沿着从-70毫秒到+70毫秒的合成VOT连续体评估辨别能力。来自英语环境的婴儿提供了可靠的受试者内证据，证明他们能够辨别位于VOT连续体正负区域的VOT对比。这些结果提供了强有力的证据，表明来自英语环境的婴儿能够辨别在英语中不具有音位性的VOT对比。阈值ΔVOT值表明，婴儿对VOT连续体正区域的VOT差异比负区域更敏感。来自说英语成年人的阈值ΔVOT值表明，在VOT连续体的每个位置都具有更高的敏感性。此外，成年人对VOT连续体正区域浊音-清音边界附近的VOT差异表现出更高的敏感性，这一发现在婴儿数据中并不明显。
