Is the development of cue weighting strategies in children's speech perception context-dependent?

Abstract

It has been proposed that young children, in contrast to adults, may have a perceptual preference for transitional cues as compared to other more static cues. However, it appears that the extent to which children make use of transitional information as compared to adults may change with consonantal context. In perception of fricative contrasts (e.g. /su/–/ u/) young children are more influenced by vowel–onset formant transitions, relative to frequency of frication noise, than are older children and adults. But, in identifying the voice onset time contrast /da/–/ta/, children appear to pay less attention to transitional information, relative to the duration of silence, than adults. Possible explanations for these discrepant results are discussed.