Learning words and learning sounds: Advances in language development

TY - JOUR

T1 - Learning words and learning sounds

T2 - Advances in language development

AU - Vihman, Marilyn

N1 - © 2016 The British Psychological Society. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2017/1/6

Y1 - 2017/1/6

N2 - Phonological development is sometimes seen as a process of learning sounds, or forming phonological categories, and then combining sounds to build words, with the evidence taken largely from studies demonstrating ‘perceptual narrowing’ in infant speech perception over the first year of life. In contrast, studies of early word production have long provided evidence that holistic word learning may precede the formation of phonological categories. In that account, children begin by matching their existing vocal patterns to adult words, with knowledge of the phonological system emerging from the network of related word forms. Here I review evidence from production and then consider how the implicit and explicit learning mechanisms assumed by the complementary memory systems model might be understood as reconciling the two approaches.

AB - Phonological development is sometimes seen as a process of learning sounds, or forming phonological categories, and then combining sounds to build words, with the evidence taken largely from studies demonstrating ‘perceptual narrowing’ in infant speech perception over the first year of life. In contrast, studies of early word production have long provided evidence that holistic word learning may precede the formation of phonological categories. In that account, children begin by matching their existing vocal patterns to adult words, with knowledge of the phonological system emerging from the network of related word forms. Here I review evidence from production and then consider how the implicit and explicit learning mechanisms assumed by the complementary memory systems model might be understood as reconciling the two approaches.

KW - complementary systems model

KW - exemplars

KW - perceptual narrowing

KW - phonological development

KW - phonological template

KW - speech sounds

KW - vocal motor scheme

KW - word learning

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85008625461&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/bjop.12207

DO - 10.1111/bjop.12207

M3 - Article

SN - 0007-1269

VL - 108

SP - 1

EP - 27

JO - British journal of psychology

JF - British journal of psychology

IS - 1

ER -