![]() For example, perceptual narrowing-the well-documented phenomenon (cf., Werker & Tees, 1984) where infants are initially able to discriminate among the full set of phonemic categories in the world’s spoken languages but then attenuate down to only the phonetic set in their native languages by their first birthday-has been extended to signed languages and offered up as a universal feature of language acquisition ( Baker, Golinkoff, & Petitto, 2006 Palmer, Fais, Werker, & Golinkoff, 2012). ![]() Past studies have uncovered other putative universals of human language acquisition via the same logical reasoning by looking for these phenomena in signed languages. Logically, such universals should also be observable in signed languages and therefore be amodal, if they are truly “universal.” For instance, Gomez et al., 2014, in a neuroimaging study of neonates’ perception of spoken phonological features, claimed to have discovered “language universals” present at birth that “shape language perception and acquisition.” However, only spoken language phonological features were studied. However, a common bias is that the biological foundation of language learning is tied to properties of speech, and that brain regions are “hardwired” at birth to propel spoken language acquisition ( Hickok & Poeppel, 2007 Liberman & Mattingly, 1989 MacNeilage & Davis, 2000 Seidenberg, 1997). The present findings suggest babies possess a sensitivity to specific sonority-based contrastive cues at the core of human language structure that is subject to perceptual narrowing, irrespective of language modality (visual or auditory), shedding new light on universals of early language learning.Ī large component of human language development research has focused on identifying the specific cues present in the language signal that captivate infants’ attention in early language learning. Younger babies showed highly significant looking preferences for well-formed, high sonority fingerspelling, while older babies showed no preference for either fingerspelling variant, despite showing a strong preference in a control condition. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing 6- and 12-month-olds with no sign language experience as they watched fingerspelling stimuli that either conformed to high sonority (well-formed) or low sonority (ill-formed) values, which are relevant to syllabic structure in signed language. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages.
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