Pupillometry registers toddlers' sensitivity to degrees of mispronunciation.

ABSTRACT: This study introduces a method ideally suited for investigating toddlers' ability to detect mispronunciations in lexical representations: pupillometry. Previous research has established that the magnitude of pupil dilation reflects differing levels of cognitive effort. Building on those findings, we use pupil dilation to study the level of detail encoded in lexical representations with 30-month-old children whose lexicons allow for a featurally balanced stimulus set. In each trial, we present a picture followed by a corresponding auditory label. By systematically manipulating the number of feature changes in the onset of the label (e.g., baby∼daby∼faby∼shaby), we tested whether featural distance predicts the degree of pupil dilation. Our findings support the existence of a relationship bet

SUBMITTER: Tamasi K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5111158 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature