Studies of infants' auditory pattern perceptions by Werker and colleagues at the University of British Columbia found that
A)six months old infants could not detect changes in language phonemes that their mothers could not detect
B)as infants began to speak words in their native language they lost their ability to discriminate between phonemes that were not in their native language
C)there was a steady decline from birth in infants' abilities to detect phonemic differences regardless of the languages in which the phonemes occur
D)infants gradually learn to discriminate more phonemes over the course of their first year

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Studies by Werker and colleagues have shown that infants initially have the ability to discriminate between phonemes from different languages, but as they grow and start to speak words in their native language, they lose this ability for phonemes not present in their native language. This phenomenon highlights the specialization of linguistic perception to the native language.

Studies of Infants' Auditory Pattern Perceptions by Werker and Colleagues