Very Young Infants’ Sensitivity to Consonant Mispronunciations in Word Recognition

Before they start to talk, infants learn the form and meaning of many common words. In the present work, we investigated the nature of this word knowledge, testing the specificity of very young infants’ (6–14 months) phonological representations in an internet-based language-guided-looking task using correct pronunciations and initial-consonant mispronunciations of common words. Across the current sample (n=78 out of 96 pre-registered), infants’ proportion looking to the target (named image) versus the distracter was significantly lower when the target word was mispronounced, indicating sensitivity to phonological deviation. Performance patterns varied by age group. The youngest group (6–8 months, n=30) was at chance in both conditions, the middle group (9–11 months, n=21) showed significant recognition of correct pronunciations and a marginal mispronunciation effect, and the oldest age group (12–14 months, n=27) demonstrated the mature pattern: significant recognition and a significant mispronunciation effect. Ongoing work is completing the pre-registered sample size.