Question 1

Identify and describe the major dimensions of speech sound distinctions.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Identify and describe the major dimensions of...

Question 2

Jusczyk and Aslin (1995) found that babies as young as 6 months of age could not segment words in sentences, whereas Bortfeld (2005) found that they could. How would you account for this difference?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Jusczyk and Aslin (1995) found that babies...

Question 3

Refer to the figure.
  Hauser et al. (2001) conducted an experiment with tamarin monkeys that was very similar to Saffran et al.'s 1996 study investigating transitional probabilities. They found that after listening to a 20-minute stream of words from the same artificial language studied by Saffran et al., the tamarins oriented to a speaker more often when it played sequences of syllables that straddled a word boundary than when it played a sequence of syllables that made up a complete word. Compare this finding to the results reported by Saffran et al. (see Figure 4.2). What do these results suggest about the use of statistical cues for segmenting words?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Refer to the figure.
  Hauser et...

Question 4

Based on the results of Mehler et al.'s 1988 study of language recognition patterns in newborns, you would expect to find that

Accepted Answer

A)  Arabic babies can differentiate German and French sounds. 
B)  Russian babies can differentiate Russian and French sounds. 
C)  French babies cannot differentiate Russian and French sounds. 
D)  Russian babies cannot differentiate Russian and French sounds.

Question 5

The most natural grouping of phonemes is

Accepted Answer

A)  p and d. 
B)  f and z. 
C)  f and s. 
D)  v and t.

Question 6

The word stove contains which types of sounds?

Accepted Answer

A)  Affricate and glide 
B)  Oral stop and nasal stop 
C)  Affricate and nasal stop 
D)  Fricative and glide

Question 7

Phonetic assimilation occurs

Accepted Answer

A)  when phonemes change into allophones. 
B)  when allophones change into phonemes. 
C)  when sounds are affected by other sounds that are adjacent to them. 
D)  when words from a foreign language become "adopted" into the home language.

Question 8

In French, nasalization of vowels indicates _______, whereas in English, the same vowel nasalization indicates _______.

Accepted Answer

A)  the presence of a diphthong; the absence of a diphthong 
B)  minimal perceptual boundaries between allophones; distinct boundaries between phonemes 
C)  distinct perceptual boundaries between phonemes; minimal boundaries between allophones 
D)  the absence of a diphthong; the presence of a diphthong

Question 9

Saffran and Thiessen's 2003 study on pattern induction by infant language learners helped demonstrate that

Accepted Answer

A)  that babies quickly learn phonotactic constraints reflecting unnatural categories. 
B)  testing requires use of real, not artificial, languages. 
C)  babies do not start life with any bias for certain kinds of statistical regularities in the sounds of speech. 
D)  evidence for learning biases in favor of natural patterns of language.

Question 10

The phonemic restoration effect suggests that humans

Accepted Answer

A)  have an unlimited phonemic inventory. 
B)  are able to pay attention to only one stimulus at a time. 
C)  have a difficult time understanding degraded speech if some part of the utterance is missing. 
D)  have the ability to understand degraded speech if most of the utterance remains intact.

Question 11

Which word would be easiest for 7.5-month-old babies of English-speaking parents to segment out of fluid speech? (Stress indicated by capital letters.)

Accepted Answer

A)  WA-ter 
B)  be-GIN 
C)  po-TA-to 
D)  dis-CUSS

Question 12

Describe what a backward transitional probability (TP) is and provide an example. Explain how an infant might use this information to decide if the word baby is a noun.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Describe what a backward transitional probability (TP)...

Question 13

In Jusczyk and Aslin's 1995 study, 7.5 month old babies could

Accepted Answer

A)  distinguish between a word they previously heard in a sentence and a novel word. 
B)  not distinguish between a word they previously heard in a sentence and a novel word. 
C)  distinguish between a word they previously heard in the voice of their parent and a new word uttered by their parent. 
D)  not distinguish between a word they previously heard in the voice of their parent and a new word uttered by their parent.

Question 14

A fricative, labiodental, and voiced sound would most likely be made by a

Accepted Answer

A)  p. 
B)  k. 
C)  v. 
D)  t.

Question 15

Design a simple experiment that could demonstrate the phonemic restoration effect.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Design a simple experiment that could demonstrate...

Question 16

Based on White et al.'s 2008 study, you would predict that the 8.5-month-old baby of English-speaking parents would

Accepted Answer

A)  use the fact that [t] and [th] are in complementary distribution as a cue to learn that they are variants of the same phoneme. 
B)  ignore the fact that /d/ and /t/ can appear in the same phonetic environments when learning which sounds represent different phonemes. 
C)  be able to distinguish between words with voiced and unvoiced fricatives (e.g., zip, sip) but not between words with voiced and unvoiced stops (e.g., bony, pony). 
D)  be able to predict the voicing of a fricative such as /z/ in zip based on the previous word presented before zip.

Question 17

Refer to the figure.
  Based on the results in the table, what can you conclude about the ability of an 8-month-old to detect words presented to him during the familiarization phase?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Refer to the figure.
  Based on...

Question 18

Dupoux et al.'s 1999 research showed that native speakers of a certain language insert illusory sounds to change syllable sequences that are "illegal" in their language to a legal sequence. These findings illustrate the power of

Accepted Answer

A)  the sonority sequencing principle. 
B)  phonotactic expectations. 
C)  dissimilation processes. 
D)  unnatural patterns.

Question 19

According to Saffran et al. (1996), which of the following is true?

Accepted Answer

A)  At 8 months of age, babies show sensitivity to transitional probabilities in their own language, but not one they are unfamiliar with. 
B)  Transitional probabilities help babies to group syllables into word-like units in the absence of any other cues. 
C)  Transitional probabilities are useful for identifying the most frequent words but not for predicting which syllables are likely to occur together. 
D)  Transitional probabilities become uninformative when combined with other cues, such as phonotactic information.

Question 20

Based on the findings of Saffran et al. (1996), an 8-month-old infant would be capable of segmenting language sounds presented in a continuous stream, without intonation to represent word breaks,

Accepted Answer

A)  only if the stream was presented in her native language. 
B)  only if he was seated on his parent's lap. 
C)  in any language, including an artificial language, as long as the streams contained multiple repetitions of the same words in varied order. 
D)  in any language except artificial languages.

Exam 3: Learning Sound Patterns