Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children
Abstract Every day, listeners encounter a wide range of acoustic signals. Successfully solving this variability problem allows them to interpret these signals accurately. While this mechanism tends to be less effortful for adults, children need to learn stable categories in the face of such variabil...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Portfolio
2024-11-01
|
| Series: | Scientific Reports |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80430-1 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1846158611445710848 |
|---|---|
| author | Ethan Kutlu Keith Baxelbaum Eldon Sorensen Jacob Oleson Bob McMurray |
| author_facet | Ethan Kutlu Keith Baxelbaum Eldon Sorensen Jacob Oleson Bob McMurray |
| author_sort | Ethan Kutlu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Every day, listeners encounter a wide range of acoustic signals. Successfully solving this variability problem allows them to interpret these signals accurately. While this mechanism tends to be less effortful for adults, children need to learn stable categories in the face of such variability. It is unknown to what extent general maturation or diversity of the input plays a role in shaping different speech categorization profiles that children can employ. Here, we tested school-aged children’s speech categorization with a continuous speech categorization task called the Visual Analogue Scaling (VAS) task. We measured the linguistic diversity in each child’s social environment through a social network analysis. We found that increased linguistic diversity led to more flexible and gradient speech categorization. On the other hand, less diverse linguistic input led to more categorical speech categorization. We argue that these findings have implications for speech perception as well as linguistic diversity research. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-9dfdf45436804b75b1b268fcd3e8091f |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-11-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj-art-9dfdf45436804b75b1b268fcd3e8091f2024-11-24T12:23:07ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222024-11-0114111910.1038/s41598-024-80430-1Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age childrenEthan Kutlu0Keith Baxelbaum1Eldon Sorensen2Jacob Oleson3Bob McMurray4Department of Linguistics, University of IowaDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of IowaDepartment of Biostatistics, University of IowaDepartment of Biostatistics, University of IowaDepartment of Linguistics, University of IowaAbstract Every day, listeners encounter a wide range of acoustic signals. Successfully solving this variability problem allows them to interpret these signals accurately. While this mechanism tends to be less effortful for adults, children need to learn stable categories in the face of such variability. It is unknown to what extent general maturation or diversity of the input plays a role in shaping different speech categorization profiles that children can employ. Here, we tested school-aged children’s speech categorization with a continuous speech categorization task called the Visual Analogue Scaling (VAS) task. We measured the linguistic diversity in each child’s social environment through a social network analysis. We found that increased linguistic diversity led to more flexible and gradient speech categorization. On the other hand, less diverse linguistic input led to more categorical speech categorization. We argue that these findings have implications for speech perception as well as linguistic diversity research.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80430-1 |
| spellingShingle | Ethan Kutlu Keith Baxelbaum Eldon Sorensen Jacob Oleson Bob McMurray Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children Scientific Reports |
| title | Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children |
| title_full | Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children |
| title_fullStr | Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children |
| title_full_unstemmed | Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children |
| title_short | Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children |
| title_sort | linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80430-1 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ethankutlu linguisticdiversityshapesflexiblespeechperceptioninschoolagechildren AT keithbaxelbaum linguisticdiversityshapesflexiblespeechperceptioninschoolagechildren AT eldonsorensen linguisticdiversityshapesflexiblespeechperceptioninschoolagechildren AT jacoboleson linguisticdiversityshapesflexiblespeechperceptioninschoolagechildren AT bobmcmurray linguisticdiversityshapesflexiblespeechperceptioninschoolagechildren |