Title: Children's Sensitivity to Vowel Length before Obstruents
Department: Linguistics
Description: English speakers produce longer vowels before a type of voiced consonants than voiceless ones. This cue helps listeners distinguish the similar sounds. For example, the a in cab is much longer than in cap. This may increase sensitivity to vowel length in conditions where it helps. Children (3-5 years) produce this cue but have not yet shown evidence they can detect it like adults and have not shown they are better at detection before sounds like b and p than neutral consonants (n and m). A new experiment design uses a game that teaches children to associate a word like 'siba' with one object and siba (long i) with another to show the vowel difference is important. If children can identify mismatches of objects and words, it would demonstrate they can detect the length difference in the vowel. Furthermore, better accuracy with b and p over neutrals would indicate heightened sensitivity where the cue appears. This method pursues a better understanding of language and cognitive development that is crucial for informing children's language education and language disorder approaches.
Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Advisor: Kate Harrigan
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