Running head: IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 1
Author Note
Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Melanie S. Schreiner, Georg-Elias-Müller
Institute for Psychology, Research Group Psychology of Language, Georg-August-University Göttingen,
Goßlerstr. 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany. E-mail: melanie.schreiner@psych.uni-goettingen.de
Listen up! Developmental differences in the impact of IDS on speech
segmentation
Melanie S. Schreiner and Nivedita Mani
Research Group Psychology of Language, Georg-August-University Göttingen,
Goßlerstr.14, 37073 Germany
Abstract
While American English infants typically segment words from fluent speech
by 7.5-months, studies of infants from other language backgrounds have
difficulty replicating this finding. One possible explanation for this cross-
linguistic difference is that the input infants from different language
backgrounds receive is not as infant-directed as American English infant-
directed speech (Floccia et al., 2016). Against this background, the current
study investigates whether German 7.5- and 9-month-old infants segment
words from fluent speech when the input is prosodically similar to American
English IDS. While 9-month-olds showed successful segmentation of words
from exaggerated IDS, 7.5-month-olds did not. These findings highlight a) the
beneficial impact of exaggerated IDS on infant speech segmentation, b)
cross-linguistic differences in word segmentation that are based not just on
the kind of input available to children and suggest c) developmental
differences in the role of IDS as an attentional spotlight in speech
segmentation.
Keywords
Infant language acquisition, speech perception, word segmentation, exaggerated infant-
directed speech
Highlights
German infants can segment exaggerated infant-directed speech
Exaggerated IDS as a tool to guide attention and facilitate language learning
Developmental differences in the role of IDS as an attentional spotlight in speech
processing
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 2
INTRODUCTION
One of the critical aspects of acquiring a language is the ability to segment the
fluent speech stream into its constituent units, i.e., words. In first language acquisition,
this ability seems to be in place by approximately 7.5-months, at least for American
English infants (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995), with some studies showing even earlier
evidence of segmentation (e.g., Bortfeld, Morgan, Golinkoff, & Rathburn, 2005).
However, it has proved difficult for studies examining infants learning other native
languages to replicate such findings at the same ages. For instance, one recent study
finds that German 9-month-olds familiarized (in the laboratory) with words embedded in
fluent speech, do not differentiate these familiarized from unfamiliar control words
(Schreiner, Altvater-Mackensen, & Mani, 2016). Studies with Dutch (Kooijman, Hagoort,
& Cutler, 2005) and French infants (Nazzi, Mersad, Sundara, Iakimova, & Polka, 2014)
find similar inconsistencies with the pattern of results reported with American English
infants. Thus, French 8-month-olds familiarized with words in isolation seem unable to
recognize the same words in fluent speech, while German 9-month-olds perform
successfully in this task so long as the words tested are highly frequent function words
(Höhle & Weissenborn, 2003). In contrast, French 8-month-olds do recognize words in
isolation when previously familiarized with the same words in fluent speech. Thus, there
appears to be considerable variation in the circumstances under which infants
successfully segment words from fluent speech across languages.
Why do we find such differences? While there are likely to be considerable cross-
cultural phenomena that may underlie such behavioral differences, we focus here on
one possible explanation for the differences found across language cultures, namely, the
differences in the kind of speech presented to infants in the studies, and in their native
language, at large. Importantly, the speech presented to infants in the Jusczyk and Aslin
(1995) study, and indeed, in most studies on speech segmentation, was in the infant-
directed speech register (hereafter, IDS), the speech register typically used in
communication with young infants. It differs from speech used in normal communication
between adults, i.e., adult-directed speech (hereafter, ADS): Speech addressed to
infants is slower, higher in pitch, with longer pauses between words, and greater pitch
variation within utterances (Kuhl et al., 1997).
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 3
The use of IDS in studies with infants is well-grounded: Not only do infants show
a preference for IDS from birth onwards (Cooper, Abraham, Berman, & Staska, 1997;
Werker, Pegg, & McLeod, 1994) but they also seem to be better in extracting words from
fluent IDS compared to ADS (Singh, Nestor, Parikh, & Yull, 2009; Thiessen, Hill, &
Saffran, 2005). Furthermore, IDS appears to facilitate word learning (Graf-Estes &
Hurley, 2013; Song, Demuth, & Morgan, 2010), and its use in communication with
infants can predict vocabulary growth (Shneidman, Arroyo, Levine, & Goldin-Meadow,
2013; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). However, it is important to note that most of this
research has been conducted with American English infants using American English
IDS.
There is considerable variation in the prosodic characteristics of IDS across
languages, with different studies finding that American English IDS is the most modified
compared to ADS amongst the languages tested (Cooper, et al., 1997; Fernald et al.,
1989, Shute & Wheldall, 1989). Against this background, is it possible that the above-
mentioned studies with infants of other languages (e.g., French, Dutch, German) fail to
replicate the pattern of segmentation reported in American English infants due to the
characteristics of IDS in the different languages? Or to put it differently, given that infants
show improved segmentation of fluent speech from IDS relative to ADS (Singh et al.,
2009; Thiessen et al., 2005) and that American English IDS is more exaggerated relative
to IDS in other languages (Cooper et al., 1997, Ferguson, 1964), would we find similar
segmentation abilities in infants learning other languages if the speech input presented
to them is as exaggerated as American English IDS?
One recent study testing speech segmentation in British English infants offers
considerable support for this possibility (Floccia et al., 2016): Only one of 13
experiments found successful word segmentation, and only when the stimuli were
presented to 10.5-month-old infants in exaggerated IDS. This suggests that the different
styles of IDS used to address infants of different dialects and different languages
critically impacts their performance in segmentation tasks
1
. Nevertheless, this study
finds successful segmentation in infants three months later than similar findings have
been reported with American English infants. The possibility remains, therefore, that
1
Note that the lack of segmentation abilities in 9-month-old British English tested with American English
IDS suggests that exaggeration might not be sufficient but that the native accent is required to succeed in
segmenting speech.
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 4
infants of other languages, e.g., German, may not be able to segment words at this
younger age even given more exaggerated IDS.
Examining this possibility is critical for the following reason. On the one hand,
were infants learning other languages, e.g., German, able to segment words from fluent
speech at 7.5-months given exaggerated IDS, this would suggest that the differences
between the studies reported to-date with infants learning other languages and
American English infants come down to the input presented. In other words, infants from
different language backgrounds would be able to segment words from fluent speech at
the same age as American English infants as long as the input is adequately
exaggerated and engaging. While this might have consequences for lexical development
in infants hearing such less engaging input on a regular basis, this would at least
suggest that there is no long-term cognitive impact of hearing such less exaggerated
IDS on day-to-day language processing. Conversely, were we to find that infants
learning German are unable to segment words at 7.5-months, even given exaggerated
input, this would suggest that merely exaggerated input is inadequate to drive successful
segmentation, at least in German infants. This would further imply that there may be
other cross-cultural (including cross-linguistic) differences between infants from different
language backgrounds that induce more long-term differences in the language behavior
of these infants. Against this background, the current study sets out to explore German
7.5- and 9-month-olds’ segmentation abilities given exaggerated IDS resembling that
heard by American English infants.
METHOD
Participants
Twenty-two 7.5-month-old, and 22 9-month-old monolingual German infants
participated in the study (Appendix.A).
Material and Design
Four passages with one of four phonotactically legal German monosyllabic
pseudowords, Jopp [ˈjɔp], Riel [ri:l], Mauf [mauf], and Lenn [lɛn], were recorded in an
exaggerated speech register resembling American English IDS (Table 1; APPENDIX B).
The same female speaker recorded five different isolated tokens of each pseudoword
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 5
which were repeated three times to form lists of 15 tokens. Stimuli were selected for
their acoustic properties to match those of American English IDS (Figure 1).
Table 1 Mean, minimum, and maximum fundamental frequency in Hz and mean duration in s for the
passages and isolated tokens of the study. Standard deviations are provided in brackets. For the
recordings of the exaggerated German IDS stimuli, a female native speaker of German imagined
herself as speaking to a child. In addition, she was asked to produce the passages and isolated
tokens in a slower and more exaggerated way than she typically would.
mean F0
min F0
max F0
mean duration
passages
299.33 (22.06)
149.13 (36.76)
440.61 (31.53)
35.12 (3.24)
isolated tokens
322.63 (80.01)
266.65 (86.33)
377.02 (96.67)
22.77 (0.33)
Figure 1 Mean, minimum and maximum fundamental frequency for typical German IDS, typical English IDS
(taken from Fernald et al., 1989), and the exaggerated German IDS stimuli used in the current study.
Procedure
A trained experimenter controlled the experiment from the adjacent room using
the stimulus-presenting software Look (Meints & Woodford, 2008). During each trial,
infants were presented with a blinking checkerboard on screen whilst simultaneously
being presented with an auditory stimulus. Using silent video images of the infant, the
experimenter initiated a trial when the infant looked towards the screen and continued to
indicate throughout the remainder of the trial whether the infant was looking towards the
screen or away by pressing a corresponding button on the keyboard. The auditory and
visual stimulus continued to play either until the trial was complete or until the infant
looked away for more than 2 s (see Mani & Paetzold, in press, for an identical
procedure). The experimenter was blind to the experimental condition as no information
100
200
300
400
500
mean min max
Frequency (Hz)
exaggerated German IDS
typical German IDS
typical American IDS
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 6
on the stimuli being presented was provided by the computer and the stimuli played in
the adjacent booth were masked by music.
Familiarization Phase. Infants listened to alternating blocks of two passages in
exaggerated IDS. Passages were either repeated for a total of 12 times or until the child
had accumulated 100 s of listening time for both passages.
Test Phase. Infants were presented with isolated tokens of the words they had
heard embedded in passages during the familiarization phase and control words they
had never heard before. Each infant received three trials of isolated tokens of either the
two familiarized, or the two control words, i.e., totalling 12 trials. Trial order within test
blocks was randomized.
RESULTS
Test Phase. A repeated-measures ANOVA with the within-subject factor
familiarity (familiarized vs. control word) and the between-subject factor age (7.5 vs. 9
months) revealed a significant interaction of familiarity and age (F(1, 42)=4.11, p=0.049,
ƞp2=0.09) and a significant main effect of age (F(1, 42)=4.70, p=0.036, ƞp2=0.10). There
was no significant main effect of familiarity (F(1, 42)=1.13, p=0.293, ƞp2=0.03). Hence,
we ran planned contrasts within each age-group to further examine infants’
segmentation abilities. For the 7.5-month-olds, there were no significant differences
between listening times to familiarized and control items (t(43)=-0.93, p=0.357, d=-0.14).
However, 9-month-olds listened significantly longer to the familiarized relative to the
control words (t(43)=2.99, p=0.005, d=0.45) indicating successful word segmentation
(Figure 2; APPENDIX C). Thus, our results suggest that German infants at 9-months
benefit from exaggerated speech in segmenting the speech stream, whereas 7.5-month-
olds did not show a similar benefit.
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 7
Figure 2 Difference scores for the mean listening times of the familiarized and the novel control words for
the 7.5- and 9-month-old infants.
Familiarization Phase. Comparing infants’ mean listening times to the
familiarization trials (Table 2), an independent-samples t-test revealed a significant
difference between 7.5- and 9-month-olds (t(42)=3.67, p=0.001, d=1.11). Thus while
7.5-month-olds listened longer to the familiarization trials relative to the 9-month-olds, it
appears that they looked away less than the 9-month-olds, thereby initiating fewer trials
during the familiarization phase.
Table 2 Infants‘ mean listening times (s) for the familiarization phase. Standard deviations are provided in
brackets.
age group
mean listening time
mean number of trials
7.5
26.85 (8.48)
4.68 (2.17)
9
18.41 (6.67)
6.77 (2.72)
DISCUSSION
Previous studies on infants’ speech segmentation report that infants from
language backgrounds other than American English do not seem able to segment words
from fluent speech to the same degree as American English infants (e.g., British English:
Floccia et al., 2016; Dutch: Junge, Cutler, & Hagoort, 2014; however, note Spanish and
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 8
Catalan infants already show segmentation abilities around 6-months of age: Bosch,
Figueras, Teixidó, & Ramon-Casas, 2013). For instance, German infants are able to
successfully segment words from fluent speech only under certain conditions, e.g., when
familiarized with isolated tokens of highly frequent function words (9 months: Höhle &
Weissenborn, 2003), presented with accentuated words (10 months: Braun, Pohl, &
Zahner, 2014), previously familiarized with similar-sounding words (Altvater-Mackensen
& Mani, 2013), or tested with words previously familiarized at home (Schreiner et al.,
2016). Similarly, British infants showed segmentation of words from fluent speech only
when presented with exaggerated IDS, similar to American English IDS (Floccia et al.,
2016), but again, only at 10.5-months. In contrast, American English infants succeed in
this task already at 7.5-months without any additional cues (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995).
Against this background, we examined whether more pronounced IDS also facilitates
word segmentation in younger German-learning infants.
The main finding of the study was that 9-month-old infants listened longer to the
familiarized words relative to the control words suggesting that infants indeed
recognized these words after an exaggerated IDS familiarization phase. Seven-and-a-
half-month-old infants did not listen longer to familiarized words, even when familiarized
in exaggerated IDS.
On the one hand, the findings with the 9-month-olds contrast previous studies
with German infants (Schreiner et al., 2016), for instance, with 9-month-olds only
listening longer to familiarized relative to control words when familiarized with these
words embedded in stories over a six-week period at home but not when presented with
a brief 100s familiarization phase. The stimuli in the Schreiner et al. (2016) study were,
however, in standard German IDS and not the exaggerated IDS presented to infants in
the current study. Thus, it is likely, that the difference in the findings can be attributed to
the speech register presented to infants across the two studies. This echoes findings
from British 10.5-month-olds (Floccia et al., 2016) while highlighting that even at a
younger age, exaggerated IDS positively impacts speech segmentation.
The results of the current study, taken together with the results reported by
Floccia et al. (2016) point to at least one potential factor underlying the cross-
linguistic/dialectal differences in speech segmentation in infants from different language
backgrounds and highlight again, the importance of IDS in early language development.
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 9
Our findings reveal differences in the ability to segment words from fluent speech
at 7.5- and 9-months as infants in the younger group failed to show significant
differences in listening times to familiarized and control tokens. This finding has
important implications for our understanding of the cross-linguistic differences in early
speech segmentation. Firstly, this suggests that – at the same age at which American
English infants successfully segment words from fluent speech – German infants fail to
show evidence of segmentation despite being provided with exaggerated speech input.
This places some limitations on the conclusions drawn by Floccia et al. (2016) and the
results with 9-month-olds in the current study as to the facilitatory impact of exaggerated
IDS on speech segmentation. Thus, it does not appear that presenting exaggerated IDS
alone induces successful segmentation in younger infants. What, then, might explain the
differences in performance between German and American English infants?
One possibility for the difference between the 7.5-month-olds and the 9-month-
olds in the current study is the difference in looking times during the familiarization
phase. 7.5-month-olds listened longer to the familiarization trials initiating fewer look-
aways than the 9-month-olds. Hence, 7.5-month-olds might not have learned the
relationship between their look-aways and stimulus presentation. It might, therefore, be
that the absence of a difference between listening times to familiarized and control
words at 7.5-months of age is due to their not performing as required in the task.
However, we note, that even 7-month-old German infants successfully discriminate
between familiarized and control words in this task given additional familiarization input
(Altvater-Mackensen & Mani, 2013). Thus, while we cannot exclude the possibility that
the 7.5-month-olds in the current task were not, in general, performing as expected, it is
unlikely that the lack of a significant difference in listening times to familiarized and
control words is solely due to this factor.
A second, more tantalizing, possibility is that the difference may lie in the
language backgrounds of the two groups of infants, including very likely, the speech
register used to address infants in the two languages. Might the absence of evidence for
segmentation in 7.5-month-olds be indicative of more long-lasting differences between
infants from the two language backgrounds that cannot be nullified by merely presenting
infants with more exaggerated speech input, as at 9-months of age? Here, we include
not just the differences in the kind of IDS presented to infants from the two language
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 10
backgrounds but also the degree of lexical and morphosyntactic complexity in the two
languages, as well as cultural differences in parent-child interactions. At the very least,
the difference between the 7.5- and 9-month-olds suggests that merely the presentation
of more exaggerated input does not induce successful segmentation in German infants
across development. This raises the question whether the findings of Floccia et al.
(2016) could be replicated with younger British infants, e.g., at 7.5-months, and the
extent to which exaggerated IDS induces successful segmentation in British infants
across development.
It is, however, important to note that we – in no way – imply that German infants
are unable to segment words at the same age as American English infants. We note that
the effect size reported for the 7.5-month-old age group is close to the meta-analytic
effect size by Bergmann and Cristia (2016). Indeed, as we can see from Figure 2, a
proportion of the 7.5-month-olds show a similar pattern as 9-month-olds, with increased
listening times to familiarized relative to novel control words. Furthermore, previous
results from our lab suggest that even younger German infants are able to segment
words from fluent speech provided they have additional cues. Taken together, this
suggests that our findings can only be taken to conclude that German infants may
require different kinds of/increased exposure to speech relative to American English
infants to show successful segmentation in this task. Against this background, ongoing
studies in our lab are currently employing an ERP-task to examine speech segmentation
in younger infants in greater detail.
The results of the current study speak to the role of IDS as an attentional spotlight
in speech processing (Kuhl, 2007; Zangl & Mills, 2007). In Altvater-Mackensen and Mani
(2013), the ability to segment similar-sounding words from fluent speech was interpreted
in terms of word-form familiarity bootstrapping segmentation. The similarity of the to-be-
segmented words to the previously familiarized words captures infants’ attention in the
otherwise unfamiliar speech stream and drives segmentation. In Schreiner et al. (2016),
recognition of familiarized words correlated significantly with infants’ attention to the
stories in ADS highlighting again the importance of attraction to speech in order to learn.
Similarly, our finding that IDS influences – at least – 9-month-olds segmentation of
speech can be interpreted as the exaggerated speech input facilitating segmentation by
capturing infants’ attention to a greater extent than other less exaggerated input.
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 11
IDS may therefore function as an ostensive cue that alerts the infant to a
referential communication that is directed towards her (Saint-Georges et al., 2013), even
during sleep – at least in neonates (Saito, Aoyama, Kondo, Fukomoto, & Konishi, 2007).
Our findings with the 9-month-olds support the idea that prosody is an important
contributor to early language processing that assists infants’ development of
segmentation abilities (Morgan, 1996). We note that these findings are similar to those
reported with British English infants (Floccia et al., 2016), albeit at a younger age. Our
findings with the 7.5-month-olds, in contrast, suggest that merely exaggerated speech
may not be adequate at all ages to drive segmentation of speech, at least in infants from
German language backgrounds and highlight the need for future studies to examine the
reasons for the differences in segmentation in infants from different language
backgrounds.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was founded by the German Excellence Initiative Award to Georg-
August-Universität Göttingen (Third funding line: Institutional Strategy). We also thank
parents and babies for their participation. Finally, we thank the editor and anonymous
reviewers for insightful and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
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APPENDIX A. Participants of the study.
age (days)
range (days)
female
additional infants2
7.5-month-old group
230
214–241
10
9
9-month-old group
271
255–291
11
4
APPENDIX B. Passages of the familiarization phase.
1 Das Jopp schmeckt sehr lecker.
2 Ein Jopp schmilzt in der Sonne.
3 Von dem köstlichen Jopp gibt es viele Sorten.
4 Das rote Jopp riecht nach Erdbeere.
5 Am Imbiss kauft Tom Gabi ein großes Jopp.
6 Mit Sahne wird das Jopp cremig.
1 Der Riel dient als Schutz.
2 Ein Riel ist ein eckiges Holz.
3 Wenn Mona den Riel bewegt, wird es lustig.
4 Ein Stück Riel schützt den Tisch.
5 Auf dem Boden liegt der schöne braune Riel.
6 Im Laden kann man Riel kaufen.
1 Der Mauf liest eine Geschichte.
2 Ein Mauf steigt die Treppe hinab.
3 Sobald er den Mauf hört, freut er sich.
4 Der tolle Mauf ist sehr mutig.
5 Im Dunkeln leuchten die grünen Augen des Mauf.
6 Dort draußen wohnt der Mauf allein.
1 Das Lenn ist eine Pflanze.
2 Ein Lenn hat eine große Blüte.
3 Da Pia das Lenn vergaß, ist es eingegangen.
4 Das pinke Lenn hat keine Blätter.
5 In der Erde stecken die Zwiebeln des Lenn.
6 Der Topf passt dem Lenn gut.
2
An additional 13 infants were tested but had to be removed from the analysis for different reasons
(unsteadiness (n=4), inability to finish the experiment (n=3), disturbance through toys (n=2), bilingualism
(n=2), and technical problems (n=1), looking times during the test phase more than two SDs away from
mean (n=1)).
IMPACT OF IDS ON SPEECH SEGMENTATION 14
APPENDIX C. Mean listening times in s for the familiarized and the control words for the
7.5- and 9-month-old age group. Standard deviations are provided in brackets.
age group
familiarized word
control word
7.5
12.02 (4.89)
12.41 (5.43)
9
10.00 (3.70)
8.74 (4.00)
