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| Publications of Reiko Mazuka :chronological combined listing:%% Journal Articles @article{fds252857, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {"Gengo-nai no kobetsu reberu tokusei to gengo kakutoku no mekanizumu" (In Japanese: The role of language specific characteristics for the mechanisms for language acquisition)}, Journal = {Baby Science}, Volume = {5}, Pages = {37-38}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds252857} } @article{fds252856, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {"Nyuuji no onsee-chikaku-gakushuu ni okeru kobetsu gengo no eikyou -- Hayashi ronbun e no komento--" (In Japanese: Influence of individual languages for infants' speech perception development. -- response to Hayashi paper --)}, Journal = {Japanese Psychological Review}, Volume = {49}, Number = {1}, Pages = {75-77}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds252856} } @article{fds252826, Author = {Sato, Y and Mazuka, R and Sogabe, Y}, Title = {A near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) study of lexical pitch accent processing in Japanese speakers}, Journal = {Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism}, Volume = {27}, Number = {SUPPL. 1}, Pages = {BP13-B06M}, Year = {2007}, Month = {November}, ISSN = {0271-678X}, Abstract = {Background and aims: The aim of this study is to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of Japanese lexical pitch accent. The left and right cerebral hemispheres work together but differently for auditory language processing in human adults. The left side activates dominantly for processing most of the linguistic aspects of speech, including phonemic, lexical and syntactic analyses (Purves, 2001; Zatorre et al., 1992). On the other hand, the right dominant or nondominant activations are observed during processing of prosodic cues such as intonational pitch characterized by changing fundamental frequencies (Imaizumi et al., 1998; Zatorre et al., 1992). Although prosody is usually associated with the melodic features of spoken language, lexical level prosody such as Japanese pitch accent can be used to distinguish word meanings. For example, a pair of homophones with two syllables is distinguished by the pitch accent pattern which is either high-low (HL) or low-high (LH) such as a'me (HL: "rain") vs. ame' (LH: "candy"). A question then arises with regard to how the lexical pitch accent is processed, especially in terms of the functional lateralization. Methods: We employed 44-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which can noninvasively measure relative changes in the concentration of hemoglobin (Hb) in the localized brain tissue. The subjects were healthy right-handed Japanese speakers (n=18, nine male and nine female, 20-22 years). We used a'me and ame' tokens (14 pairs), ka'me (turtle) and kame' (ceramic jar) tokens (14 pairs), and bisyllabic Japanese words differing by pitch accent pattern (HL vs. LH) (14pairs). In addition, pure tone stimuli were created by extracting fundamental frequencies from the a'me and ame' words. Four conditions were performed in a block design paradigm. In the ame condition, the baseline block (20 s or 25 s) contained only a'me or ame' which was repeated approximately every 1.25 s. The test block (10 s) contained both a'me and ame' presented in a pseudo-random order with the equal probabilities. The kame condition was included to compare the phonemic change (/a/ to /ka/) to the lexical pitch-accent. In this condition, a'me or ame' was presented during the baseline, but ame and kame were presented in the test block. Similarly, in the variable words and the pure tone conditions, the baseline block contained either HL or LH pattern stimuli, the test block consisted of both pitch pattern stimuli. In order to assess cerebral lateralization, a laterality index, LI = (L ? R) / (L + R), was calculated from the peaks of the Oxy-Hb responses in the left (L) and the right (R) temporal areas in each condition. Results and conclusions: The results showed that the LI for the pure tone condition was significantly smaller than those for other three conditions, indicating that the lexical pitch accent is processed with more leftward shift compared with the processing of non-linguistic pure tone stimuli. Our results suggest that unlike more global prosody, which has been reported to be processed by the right hemisphere, lexical pitch accent is processed quot;linguisticallyquot; by Japanese native speakers.}, Key = {fds252826} } @article{fds252828, Author = {Utsugi, A and Koizumi, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {A robust method to detect dialectal differences in the perception of lexical pitch accent}, Journal = {20th International Congress on Acoustics 2010, Ica 2010 Incorporating Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society}, Volume = {5}, Pages = {3689-3696}, Year = {2010}, Month = {December}, Abstract = {While Standard (Tokyo) Japanese has a lexical tonal system known as 'lexical pitch accent', there are some varieties of Japanese, called 'accentless' dialects, which do not have any lexical tonal phenomena. We investigated the differences in the perception of lexical pitch accent between the speakers of the accentless dialect and those of Standard Japanese, and the robustness of two approaches to investigate such dialectal differences. We conducted two experiments: categorical perception and sequence recall experiments. The former is an approach that has been traditionally employed to study the perception of phonological contrasts. The latter is a more recent method employed in studies of 'stress-deafness' in French by Dupoux and his colleagues, in which participants listen to sequences of several nonsense words and answer the order of the words. The results of the categorical perception experiment showed no clear dialectal differences. On the other hand, the results of the sequence recall task showed that the scores of the 'accentless' group were clearly lower than those of control (Standard Japanese) participants in the discrimination of nonsense words whose pitch accent differences corresponded to lexical differences in Standard Japanese phonology. Thus, it is concluded that the latter experimental approach is more robust to study dialectal differences in pitch accent perception than the former.}, Key = {fds252828} } @article{fds252848, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {Acquisition of linguistic-rhythm and prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis (In Japanese; Gengorizumu no kakutoku to inritsu ni yoru bootosutorappingukasetsu"}, Journal = {Japanese Journal of Phonology}, Volume = {13}, Number = {3}, Pages = {19-32}, Year = {2009}, Abstract = {In the Rhythm-based Prosodic Bootstrapping Hypothesis, it is proposed that infants' early sensitivity to the rhythmic properties of a language will enable them to adopt a metrical speech segmentation strategy appropriate for their language. The proposal was borne out of recent research in infant speech perception which demonstrated that young infants are sensitive to prosodic properties of language that are relevant to linguistic rhythm. Systematic evaluation of the literature revealed that while the acquisition of stress-timed languages appear to fit the prediction of the bootstrapping hypothesis, data from the other languages are not so clear. Japanese data, in particular, is not consistent with the hypothesis. It is argued that the rhythm of a language may be salient for infants in all languages, but how this sensitivity is linked to other aspects of language acquisition may differ for the three rhythm types.}, Key = {fds252848} } @article{fds332176, Author = {Sugiura, L and Toyota, T and Matsuba-Kurita, H and Iwayama, Y and Mazuka, R and Yoshikawa, T and Hagiwara, H}, Title = {Age-Dependent Effects of Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT) Gene Val158Met Polymorphism on Language Function in Developing Children.}, Journal = {Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)}, Volume = {27}, Number = {1}, Pages = {104-116}, Year = {2017}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhw371}, Abstract = {The genetic basis controlling language development remains elusive. Previous studies of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met genotype and cognition have focused on prefrontally guided executive functions involving dopamine. However, COMT may further influence posterior cortical regions implicated in language perception. We investigated whether COMT influences language ability and cortical language processing involving the posterior language regions in 246 children aged 6-10 years. We assessed language ability using a language test and cortical responses recorded during language processing using a word repetition task and functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The COMT genotype had significant effects on language performance and processing. Importantly, Met carriers outperformed Val homozygotes in language ability during the early elementary school years (6-8 years), whereas Val homozygotes exhibited significant language development during the later elementary school years. Both genotype groups exhibited equal language performance at approximately 10 years of age. Val homozygotes exhibited significantly less cortical activation compared with Met carriers during word processing, particularly at older ages. These findings regarding dopamine transmission efficacy may be explained by a hypothetical inverted U-shaped curve. Our findings indicate that the effects of the COMT genotype on language ability and cortical language processing may change in a narrow age window of 6-10 years.}, Doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhw371}, Key = {fds332176} } @article{fds329036, Author = {Akimoto, Y and Takahashi, H and Gunji, A and Kaneko, Y and Asano, M and Matsuo, J and Ota, M and Kunugi, H and Hanakawa, T and Mazuka, R and Kamio, Y}, Title = {Alpha band event-related desynchronization underlying social situational context processing during irony comprehension: A magnetoencephalography source localization study.}, Journal = {Brain and Language}, Volume = {175}, Pages = {42-46}, Year = {2017}, Month = {December}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2017.09.002}, Abstract = {Irony comprehension requires integration of social contextual information. Previous studies have investigated temporal aspects of irony processing and its neural substrates using psychological/electroencephalogram or functional magnetic resonance imaging methods, but have not clarified the temporospatial neural mechanisms of irony comprehension. Therefore, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate the neural generators of alpha-band (8-13Hz) event-related desynchronization (ERD) occurring from 600 to 900ms following the onset of a critical sentence at which social situational contexts activated ironic representation. We found that the right anterior temporal lobe, which is involved in processing social knowledge and evaluating others' intentions, exhibited stronger alpha ERD following an ironic statement than following a literal statement. We also found that alpha power in the left anterior temporal lobe correlated with the participants' communication abilities. These results elucidate the temporospatial neural mechanisms of language comprehension in social contexts, including non-literal processing.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2017.09.002}, Key = {fds329036} } @article{fds335695, Author = {Guevara-Rukoz, A and Cristia, A and Ludusan, B and Thiollière, R and Martin, A and Mazuka, R and Dupoux, E}, Title = {Are Words Easier to Learn From Infant- Than Adult-Directed Speech? A Quantitative Corpus-Based Investigation.}, Journal = {Cognitive Science}, Year = {2018}, Month = {May}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12616}, Abstract = {We investigate whether infant-directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than in ADS. At the phonological level, we find an effect in the opposite direction: The IDS lexicon contains more distinctive words (such as onomatopoeias) than the ADS counterpart. Combining the acoustic and phonological metrics together in a global discriminability score reveals that the bigger separation of lexical categories in the phonological space does not compensate for the opposite effect observed at the acoustic level. As a result, IDS word forms are still globally less discriminable than ADS word forms, even though the effect is numerically small. We discuss the implication of these findings for the view that the functional role of IDS is to improve language learnability.}, Doi = {10.1111/cogs.12616}, Key = {fds335695} } @article{fds252800, Author = {Matsuda, Y-T and Ueno, K and Cheng, K and Konishi, Y and Mazuka, R and Okanoya, K}, Title = {Auditory observation of infant-directed speech by mothers: experience-dependent interaction between language and emotion in the basal ganglia.}, Journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience}, Volume = {8}, Pages = {907}, Publisher = {FRONTIERS RESEARCH FOUNDATION}, Year = {2014}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {1662-5161}, url = {http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000344452300001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=47d3190e77e5a3a53558812f597b0b92}, Abstract = {Adults address infants with a special speech register known as infant-directed speech (IDS), which conveys both linguistic and emotional information through its characteristic lexicon and exaggerated prosody (e.g., higher pitched, slower, and hyperarticulated). Although caregivers are known to regulate the usage of IDS (linguistic and emotional components) depending on their child's development, the underlying neural substrates of this flexible modification are largely unknown. Here, using an auditory observation method and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of four different groups of females, we revealed the experience-dependent influence of the emotional component on linguistic processing in the right caudate nucleus when mothers process IDS: (1) non-mothers, who do not use IDS regularly, showed no significant difference between IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS); (2) mothers with preverbal infants, who primarily use the emotional component of IDS, showed the main effect of the emotional component of IDS; (3) mothers with toddlers at the two-word stage, who use both linguistic and emotional components of IDS, showed an interaction between the linguistic and emotional components of IDS; and (4) mothers with school-age children, who use ADS rather than IDS toward their children, showed a tendency toward the main effect of ADS. The task that was most comparable to the naturalistic categories of IDS (i.e., explicit-language and implicit-emotion processing) recruited the right caudate nucleus, but it was not recruited in the control, less naturalistic condition (explicit-emotion and implicit-language processing). Our results indicate that the right caudate nucleus processes experience-and task-dependent interactions between language and emotion in mothers' IDS.}, Doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2014.00907}, Key = {fds252800} } @article{fds252850, Author = {Gervain, J and Nespor, M and Mazuka, R and Horie, R and Mehler, J}, Title = {Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: a Japanese-Italian cross-linguistic study.}, Journal = {Cognitive Psychology}, Volume = {57}, Number = {1}, Pages = {56-74}, Year = {2008}, Month = {August}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18241850}, Abstract = {Learning word order is one of the earliest feats infants accomplish during language acquisition [Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.]. Two theories have been proposed to account for this fact. Constructivist/lexicalist theories [Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74(3), 209-253.] argue that word order is learned separately for each lexical item or construction. Generativist theories [Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.], on the other hand, claim that word order is an abstract and general property, determined from the input independently of individual words. Here, we show that eight-month-old Japanese and Italian infants have opposite order preferences in an artificial grammar experiment, mirroring the opposite word orders of their respective native languages. This suggests that infants possess some representation of word order prelexically, arguing for the generativist view. We propose a frequency-based bootstrapping mechanism to account for our results, arguing that infants might build this representation by tracking the order of functors and content words, identified through their different frequency distributions. We investigate frequency and word order patterns in infant-directed Japanese and Italian corpora to support this claim.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.12.001}, Key = {fds252850} } @article{fds252853, Author = {Sato, Y and Sogabe, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Brain responses in the processing of lexical pitch-accent by Japanese speakers.}, Journal = {Neuroreport}, Volume = {18}, Number = {18}, Pages = {2001-2004}, Year = {2007}, Month = {December}, ISSN = {0959-4965}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18007202}, Abstract = {Near-infrared spectroscopy was used to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of Japanese lexical pitch-accent by adult native speakers of Japanese. We measured cortical hemodynamic responses to a pitch pattern change (high-low vs. low-high) embedded in disyllabic words or pure tones. The results showed that the responses to the pitch pattern change within the words were larger than those for the pure tones in the left temporoparietal region. Activation in the left frontal region was also observed for the perception of pitch pattern change within the words. These results indicate that the left language-related regions contribute to the processing of lexical pitch-accent in native Japanese speakers.}, Doi = {10.1097/wnr.0b013e3282f262de}, Key = {fds252853} } @article{fds347648, Author = {Tsuji, S and Jincho, N and Mazuka, R and Cristia, A}, Title = {Communicative cues in the absence of a human interaction partner enhance 12-month-old infants' word learning.}, Journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology}, Volume = {191}, Pages = {104740}, Year = {2020}, Month = {March}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104740}, Abstract = {Is infants' word learning boosted by nonhuman social agents? An on-screen virtual agent taught infants word-object associations in a setup where the presence of contingent and referential cues could be manipulated using gaze contingency. In the study, 12-month-old Japanese-learning children (N = 36) looked significantly more to the correct object when it was labeled after exposure to a contingent and referential display versus a noncontingent and nonreferential display. These results show that communicative cues can augment learning even for a nonhuman agent, a finding highly relevant for our understanding of the mechanisms through which the social environment supports language acquisition and for research on the use of interactive screen media.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104740}, Key = {fds347648} } @article{fds318737, Author = {Nakamura, R and Miyazawa, K and Ishihara, H and Nishikawa, K and Kikuchi, H and Asada, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Constructing the corpus of infant-directed speech and infant-like robot-directed speech}, Journal = {Hai 2015 Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Human Agent Interaction}, Pages = {167-169}, Year = {2015}, Month = {October}, ISBN = {9781450335270}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2814940.2814965}, Abstract = {The characteristics of the spoken language used to address infants have been eagerly studied as a part of the language acquisition research. Because of the uncontrollability factor with regard to the infants, the features and roles of infantdirected speech were tried to be revealed by the comparison of speech directed toward infants and that toward other listeners. However, they share few characteristics with infants, while infants have many characteristics which may derive the features of IDS. In this study, to solve this problem, we will introduce a new approach that replaces the infant with an infant-like robot which is designed to control its motions and to imitate its appearance very similar to a real infant. We have now recorded both infant-and infantlike robot-directed speech and are constructing both corpora. Analysis of these corpora is expected to contribute to the studies of infant-directed speech. In this paper, we discuss the contents of this approach and the outline of the corpora.}, Doi = {10.1145/2814940.2814965}, Key = {fds318737} } @article{fds252818, Author = {Lust, B and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Cross-linguistic studies of directionality in first language acquisition: the Japanese data--a response to O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei & Cho 1986.}, Journal = {Journal of Child Language}, Volume = {16}, Number = {3}, Pages = {665-684}, Year = {1989}, Month = {October}, ISSN = {0305-0009}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2808580}, Abstract = {Elsewhere we have argued on the basis of cross linguistic studies of directionality effects on anaphora in child language, that there is no universal 'forward directionality preference (FDP)'; rather such a preference is linked to languages with specific grammatical properties. Although such a preference has been attested in English acquisition, matched experimental designs in Japanese, Chinese and Sinhalese, for example, do not show this effect. In this paper we argue that current attempts to show that forward directionality effects can also be induced in Japanese acquisition do not succeed in supporting the FDP. Specifics of the design of stimulus sentences in these experiments vary previous cross-linguistic designs so as to favour forward directionality on independent grounds, and confound cross linguistic comparisons. They in fact support a universal structure dependence in children's hypotheses about directionality of anaphora.}, Doi = {10.1017/s0305000900010783}, Key = {fds252818} } @article{fds367652, Author = {Matsui, S and Iwamoto, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Development of allophonic realization until adolescence: A production study of the affricate-fricative variation of /z/ among Japanese children}, Journal = {Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech}, Volume = {2022-September}, Pages = {739-743}, Year = {2022}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2022-346}, Abstract = {The development of allophonic variants of phonemes is poorly understood. Thus, this study aimed to examine when children typically begin to articulate a phoneme with the same allophonic variant typically used by adults. Japanese children aged 5-13 years and adults aged 18-24 years participated in an elicited production task. We analyzed developmental changes in allophonic variation of the phoneme/z/, which is realized variably either as an affricate or a fricative. The results revealed that children aged nine years or younger realized/z/as affricate significantly more than 13-year-old and adult speakers. Once the children reached 11 years of age, the difference compared to adults was not statistically significant, which denotes a similar developmental pattern as that of speech motor control (e.g., lip and jaw) and cognitive-linguistic skill. Moreover, we examined whether the developmental changes of allophonic realization of/z/are due to speech rate and the time to articulate/z/. The results showed that the allophonic realization of/z/is not affected by these factors, which is not the case in adults. We also found that the effects of speech rate and the time to articulate/z/on the allophonic realization become adult-like at around 11 years of age.}, Doi = {10.21437/Interspeech.2022-346}, Key = {fds367652} } @article{fds252851, Author = {Mazuka, R and Jincho, N and Oishi, H}, Title = {Development of executive control and language processing}, Journal = {Language and Linguistics Compass}, Volume = {3}, Number = {1}, Pages = {59-89}, Publisher = {WILEY}, Year = {2009}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {1749-818X}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00102.x}, Abstract = {Research in executive function development has shown that children have poor control of inhibition functions, including the inhibition of prepotent responses, control of attention, and flexibility at rule-shifting. To date, links between the development of executive function and children's language development have not been investigated explicitly. Yet, recent studies on children's sentence processing report that children tend to perseverate during sentence processing. We argue that such perseveration may be due to immature executive function. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.}, Doi = {10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00102.x}, Key = {fds252851} } @article{fds335696, Author = {Shin, M and Choi, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Development of fricative sound perception in Korean infants: The role of language experience and infants' initial sensitivity.}, Journal = {Plos One}, Volume = {13}, Number = {6}, Pages = {e0199045}, Year = {2018}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199045}, Abstract = {In this paper, we report data on the development of Korean infants' perception of a rare fricative phoneme distinction. Korean fricative consonants have received much interest in the linguistic community due to the language's distinct categorization of sounds. Unlike many fricative contrasts utilized in most of the world's languages, Korean fricatives (/s*/-/s/) are all voiceless. Moreover, compared with other sound categories, fricatives have received very little attention in the speech perception development field and no studies thus far have examined Korean infants' development of native phonology in this domain. Using a visual habituation paradigm, we tested 4‒6-month-old and 7‒9-month-old Korean infants on their abilities to discriminate the Korean fricative pair in the [a] vowel context, /s*a/-/sa/, which can be distinguished based on acoustic cues, such as the durations of aspiration and frication noise. Korean infants older than 7 months were able to reliably discriminate the fricative pair but younger infants did not show clear signs of such discrimination. These results add to the growing evidence that there are native sound contrasts infants cannot discriminate early on without a certain amount of language exposure, providing further data to help delineate the specific nature of early perceptual capacity.}, Doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0199045}, Key = {fds335696} } @article{fds252842, Author = {Sato, Y and Sogabe, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Development of hemispheric specialization for lexical pitch-accent in Japanese infants.}, Journal = {Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience}, Volume = {22}, Number = {11}, Pages = {2503-2513}, Year = {2010}, Month = {November}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19925204}, Abstract = {Infants' speech perception abilities change through the first year of life, from broad sensitivity to a wide range of speech contrasts to becoming more finely attuned to their native language. What remains unclear, however, is how this perceptual change relates to brain responses to native language contrasts in terms of the functional specialization of the left and right hemispheres. Here, to elucidate the developmental changes in functional lateralization accompanying this perceptual change, we conducted two experiments on Japanese infants using Japanese lexical pitch-accent, which changes word meanings with the pitch pattern within words. In the first behavioral experiment, using visual habituation, we confirmed that infants at both 4 and 10 months have sensitivities to the lexical pitch-accent pattern change embedded in disyllabic words. In the second experiment, near-infrared spectroscopy was used to measure cortical hemodynamic responses in the left and right hemispheres to the same lexical pitch-accent pattern changes and their pure tone counterparts. We found that brain responses to the pitch change within words differed between 4- and 10-month-old infants in terms of functional lateralization: Left hemisphere dominance for the perception of the pitch change embedded in words was seen only in the 10-month-olds. These results suggest that the perceptual change in Japanese lexical pitch-accent may be related to a shift in functional lateralization from bilateral to left hemisphere dominance.}, Doi = {10.1162/jocn.2009.21377}, Key = {fds252842} } @article{fds252808, Author = {Mazuka, R and Hasegawa, M and Tsuji, S}, Title = {Development of non-native vowel discrimination: Improvement without exposure.}, Journal = {Developmental Psychobiology}, Volume = {56}, Number = {2}, Pages = {192-209}, Year = {2014}, Month = {February}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24374789}, Abstract = {The present study tested Japanese 4.5- and 10-month old infants' ability to discriminate three German vowel pairs, none of which are contrastive in Japanese, using a visual habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Japanese adults' discrimination of the same pairs was also tested. The results revealed that Japanese 4.5-month old infants discriminated the German /bu:k/-/by:k/ contrast, but they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bi:k/-/be:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese 10-month old infants, on the other hand, discriminated the German /bi:k/-/be:k/ contrast, while they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bu:k/-/by:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese adults, in contrast, were highly accurate in their discrimination of all of the pairs. The results indicate that discrimination of non-native contrasts is not always easy even for young infants, and that their ability to discriminate non-native contrasts can improve with age even when they receive no exposure to a language in which the given contrast is phonemic.}, Doi = {10.1002/dev.21193}, Key = {fds252808} } @article{fds252836, Author = {Sato, Y and Kato, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Development of single/geminate obstruent discrimination by Japanese infants: early integration of durational and nondurational cues.}, Journal = {Developmental Psychology}, Volume = {48}, Number = {1}, Pages = {18-34}, Year = {2012}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21967561}, Abstract = {The Japanese language has single/geminate obstruents characterized by durational difference in closure/frication as part of the phonemic repertoire used to distinguish word meanings. We first evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate naturally uttered single/geminate obstruents (/pata/ and /patta/) using the visual habituation-dishabituation method. The results revealed that 9.5-month-old Japanese infants were able to make this discrimination, t(21) = 2.119, p = .046, paired t test, whereas 4-month-olds were not, t(25) = 0.395, p = .696, paired t test. To examine how acoustic correlates (covarying cues) are associated with the contrast discrimination, we tested Japanese infants at 9.5 and 11.5 months of age with 3 combinations of natural and manipulated stimuli. The 11.5-month-olds were able to discriminate the naturally uttered pair (/pata/ vs. /patta/), t(20) = 4.680, p < .000, paired t test. Neither group discriminated the natural /patta/ from the manipulated /pata/ created from natural /patta/ tokens: For 9.5-month-olds, t(23) = 0.754, p = .458; for 11.5-month-olds, t(27) = 0.789, p = .437, paired t tests. Only the 11.5-month-olds discriminated the natural /pata/ and the manipulated /patta/ created from /pata/ tokens: For 9.5-month-olds, t(24) = 0.114, p = .910; for 11.5-month-olds, t(23) = 2.244, p = .035, paired t tests. These results suggest that Japanese infants acquire a sensitivity to contrasts of single/geminate obstruents by 9.5 months of age and that certain cues that covary with closure length either facilitate or interfere with contrast discrimination under particular conditions.}, Doi = {10.1037/a0025528}, Key = {fds252836} } @article{fds252802, Author = {Jincho, N and Feng, G and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Development of text reading in Japanese: An eye movement study}, Journal = {Reading and Writing}, Volume = {27}, Number = {8}, Pages = {1437-1465}, Year = {2014}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {0922-4777}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11145-014-9500-9}, Abstract = {This study examined age-group differences in eye movements among third-grade, fifth-grade, and adult Japanese readers. In Experiment 1, Japanese children, but not adults, showed a longer fixation time on logographic kanji words than on phonologically transparent hiragana words. Further, an age-group difference was found in the first fixation duration on hiragana words but not on kanji words, suggesting character-type-dependent reading development in Japanese children. Examination of the distributions of saccade landing positions revealed that, like adults, both third and fifth graders fixated more on kanji than on hiragana characters, which suggests that even young children utilize the same oculomotor control strategy (the kanji targeting strategy) as Japanese adults. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the proportion of kanji characters in a text affected adult reading performance. Japanese adults made more refixations and regressions in texts with a high proportion of hiragana characters. The results of both experiments suggest that differences between kanji and kana affect the reading efficiency of school-age children and that maturation of reading skills allows adults to optimize their strategy in reading kanji and kana mixed texts. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.}, Doi = {10.1007/s11145-014-9500-9}, Key = {fds252802} } @article{fds252806, Author = {Jincho, N and Feng, G and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Development of text reading in Japanese: an eye movement study}, Journal = {Reading and Writing}, Volume = {27}, Number = {8}, Pages = {1-29}, Publisher = {Springer Nature}, Year = {2014}, ISSN = {0922-4777}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11145-014-9500-9}, Doi = {10.1007/s11145-014-9500-9}, Key = {fds252806} } @article{fds366578, Author = {Jincho, N and Oishi, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Developmental Changes in the Utilization of Referential Visual Context during Sentence Comprehension: Eye Movement and Pupil Dilation Evidence from Children and Adults}, Journal = {Language Learning and Development}, Volume = {15}, Number = {4}, Pages = {350-365}, Year = {2019}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2019.1645668}, Abstract = {This study investigated age differences in the utilization of visually contrastive information (i.e., differently colored identical objects) for temporary referential ambiguity resolution during spoken sentence comprehension. Five- and 6-year-old Japanese children and adults listened to sentences that contained a color adjective-noun combination and identified the object that the noun phrase referred to from a visual scene. We examined the effects of visually contrastive information on either fixations on referent/competitor objects or pupil dilations. The results showed that participants of all age groups directed fewer gazes toward the referent object after they heard the adjectives, when the visually contrastive object was the competitor (i.e., not the referent). The 5-year-olds also directed fewer gazes toward the referent when the contrastive object was the referent. With regard to pupil dilations, no significant effects emerged among adults; however, the pupil dilations of 6-year-olds were larger when the displays contained visually contrastive information than when they did not. The pupil dilations of 5-year-olds were smaller when the referent was one of the contrastive objects. These results suggest that young children’s utilization of visually contrastive information is not fully mature and that it may begin with scalar adjectives and eventually generalize to non-scalar adjectives.}, Doi = {10.1080/15475441.2019.1645668}, Key = {fds366578} } @article{fds355989, Author = {Yamane, N and Sato, Y and Shimura, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Developmental differences in the hemodynamic response to changes in lyrics and melodies by 4- and 12-month-old infants.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {213}, Pages = {104711}, Year = {2021}, Month = {August}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104711}, Abstract = {Songs and speech play central roles in early caretaker-infant communicative interactions, which are crucial for infants' cognitive, social, and emotional development. Compared to speech development, however, much less is known about how infants process songs or how songs affect their development. Lyrics and melody are two key components of songs, and much of the research on song processing has examined how the two components of the songs are processed. The current study focused on the roles of lyrics and melody in song perception, by examining developmental patterns and the ways in which lyrics and melody are processed in the infants' brains using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The results revealed that developmental changes occur in infants' processing of lyrics and melody in a similar timeline as perceptual reorganization, that is, from 4.5 and 12 months of age. We found that 4.5-month-olds showed a right hemispheric advantage in the processing of songs that underwent a change in either lyrics or melodies. Conversely, 12-month-olds showed significantly higher activation bilaterally when lyrics and melody changed at the same time. These results suggest that 4.5-month-olds processed songs in the same manner as music without lyrics. Moreover, 12-month-olds processed lyrics and melody in an interactive manner, a sign of a more mature processing method. These findings highlight the importance of investigating the independent development of music and language, and also considering the relationship between speech and song, lyrics and melody in song, and speech and music more broadly.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104711}, Key = {fds355989} } @article{fds252812, Author = {Sato, Y and Utsugi, A and Yamane, N and Koizumi, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Dialectal differences in hemispheric specialization for Japanese lexical pitch accent.}, Journal = {Brain and Language}, Volume = {127}, Number = {3}, Pages = {475-483}, Year = {2013}, Month = {December}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24139706}, Abstract = {Language experience can alter perceptual abilities and the neural specialization for phonological contrasts. Here we investigated whether dialectal differences in the lexical use of pitch information lead to differences in functional lateralization for pitch processing. We measured cortical hemodynamic responses to pitch pattern changes in native speakers of Standard (Tokyo) Japanese, which has a lexical pitch accent system, and native speakers of 'accentless' dialects, which do not have any lexical tonal phenomena. While the Standard Japanese speakers showed left-dominant responses in temporal regions to pitch pattern changes within words, the accentless dialects speakers did not show such left-dominance. Pitch pattern changes within harmonic-complex tones also elicited different brain activation patterns between the two groups. These results indicate that the neural processing of pitch information differs depending on the listener's native dialect, and that listeners' linguistic experiences may further affect the processing of pitch changes even for non-linguistic sounds.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2013.09.008}, Key = {fds252812} } @article{fds252839, Author = {Sato, Y and Sogabe, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Discrimination of phonemic vowel length by Japanese infants.}, Journal = {Developmental Psychology}, Volume = {46}, Number = {1}, Pages = {106-119}, Year = {2010}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20053010}, Abstract = {Japanese has a vowel duration contrast as one component of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. It is not clear, however, how a sensitivity to vowel duration can develop in a linguistic context. In the present study, using the visual habituation-dishabituation method, the authors evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate Japanese long and short vowels embedded in two-syllable words (/mana/ vs. /ma:na/). The results revealed that 4-month-old Japanese infants (n = 32) failed to discriminate the contrast (p = .676), whereas 9.5-month-olds (n = 33) showed the discrimination ability (p = .014). The 7.5-month-olds did not show positive evidence to discriminate the contrast either when the edited stimuli were used (n = 33; p = .275) or when naturally uttered stimuli were used (n = 33; p = .189). By contrast, the 4-month-olds (n = 24) showed sensitivity to a vowel quality change (/mana/ vs. /mina/; p = .034). These results indicate that Japanese infants acquire sensitivity to long-short vowel contrasts between 7.5 and 9.5 months of age and that the developmental course of the phonemic category by the durational changes is different from that by the quality change.}, Doi = {10.1037/a0016718}, Key = {fds252839} } @article{fds367411, Author = {Singh, L and Rajendra, SJ and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Diversity and representation in studies of infant perceptual narrowing}, Journal = {Child Development Perspectives}, Volume = {16}, Number = {4}, Pages = {191-199}, Year = {2022}, Month = {December}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12468}, Abstract = {Over the past 50 years, scientists have made amazing discoveries about the origins of human language acquisition. Central to this field of study is the process by which infants' perceptual sensitivities gradually align with native language structure, known as perceptual narrowing. Perceptual narrowing offers a theoretical account of how infants draw on environmental experience to induce underlying linguistic structure, providing an important pathway to word learning. Researchers have advanced perceptual narrowing theory as a universal developmental theory that applies broadly across language learners. In this article, we examine diversity and representation of empirical evidence for perceptual narrowing of speech in infancy. As demonstrated, cumulative evidence draws from limited types of learners, languages, and locations, so current accounts of perceptual narrowing must be viewed in terms of sampling patterns. We suggest actions to diversify and broaden empirical investigations of perceptual narrowing to address core issues of validity, replicability, and generalizability.}, Doi = {10.1111/cdep.12468}, Key = {fds367411} } @article{fds356992, Author = {Ludusan, B and Mazuka, R and Dupoux, E}, Title = {Does Infant-Directed Speech Help Phonetic Learning? A Machine Learning Investigation.}, Journal = {Cognitive Science}, Volume = {45}, Number = {5}, Pages = {e12946}, Year = {2021}, Month = {May}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12946}, Abstract = {A prominent hypothesis holds that by speaking to infants in infant-directed speech (IDS) as opposed to adult-directed speech (ADS), parents help them learn phonetic categories. Specifically, two characteristics of IDS have been claimed to facilitate learning: hyperarticulation, which makes the categories more separable, and variability, which makes the generalization more robust. Here, we test the separability and robustness of vowel category learning on acoustic representations of speech uttered by Japanese adults in ADS, IDS (addressed to 18- to 24-month olds), or read speech (RS). Separability is determined by means of a distance measure computed between the five short vowel categories of Japanese, while robustness is assessed by testing the ability of six different machine learning algorithms trained to classify vowels to generalize on stimuli spoken by a novel speaker in ADS. Using two different speech representations, we find that hyperarticulated speech, in the case of RS, can yield better separability, and that increased between-speaker variability in ADS can yield, for some algorithms, more robust categories. However, these conclusions do not apply to IDS, which turned out to yield neither more separable nor more robust categories compared to ADS inputs. We discuss the usefulness of machine learning algorithms run on real data to test hypotheses about the functional role of IDS.}, Doi = {10.1111/cogs.12946}, Key = {fds356992} } @article{fds252841, Author = {Zervakis, J and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Effect of repeated evaluation and repeated exposure on acceptability ratings of sentences.}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {42}, Number = {6}, Pages = {505-525}, Year = {2013}, Month = {December}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23179954}, Abstract = {This study investigated the effect of repeated evaluation and repeated exposure on grammatical acceptability ratings for both acceptable and unacceptable sentence types. In Experiment 1, subjects in the Experimental group rated multiple examples of two ungrammatical sentence types (ungrammatical binding and double object with dative-only verb), and two difficult to process sentence types [center-embedded (2) and garden path ambiguous relative], along with matched grammatical/non-difficult sentences, before rating a final set of experimental sentences. Subjects in the control group rated unrelated sentences during the exposure period before rating the experimental sentences. Subjects in the Experimental group rated both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences as more acceptable after repeated evaluation than subjects in the Control group. In Experiment 2, subjects answered a comprehension question after reading each sentence during the exposure period. Subjects in the experimental group rated garden path and center-embedded (1) sentences as higher in acceptability after comprehension exposure than subjects in the control group. The results are consistent with increased fluency of comprehension being misattributed as a change in acceptability.}, Doi = {10.1007/s10936-012-9233-3}, Key = {fds252841} } @article{fds252858, Author = {Misono, Y and Mazuka, R and Kondo, T and Kiritani, S}, Title = {Effects and limitations of prosodic and semantic biases on syntactic ambiguity resolution of Japanese sentences}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {26}, Number = {2}, Pages = {229-245}, Year = {1997}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110434}, Abstract = {This paper examined the effects of prosody on the syntactic ambiguity resolution of Japanese sentences, especially with reference to the interaction with semantic bias. Syntactically ambiguous sentences with different types of semantic bias were constructed. The degree of bias in each sentence was evaluated through visual presentation experiments. Three types of sentences were selected based on the results of visual presentation experiments, were recorded with prosody maximally favoring each possible interpretation of the sentences, and were used as the stimuli for the auditory presentation experiments. The results showed that prosodic cues can influence the interpretation of a sentence even when the sentence is strongly semantically biased. The results also showed a limitation to prosodic cues. The prosodic biases alone were not sufficient to fully determine the interpretation of the sentences even when the sentences were neutrally biased semantically.}, Key = {fds252858} } @article{fds304693, Author = {Misono, Y and Mazuka, R and Kondo, T and Kiritani, S}, Title = {Effects and limitations of prosodic and semantic biases on syntactic disambiguation.}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {26}, Number = {2}, Pages = {229-245}, Year = {1997}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110434}, Abstract = {This paper examined the effects of prosody on the syntactic ambiguity resolution of Japanese sentences, especially with reference to the interaction with semantic bias. Syntactically ambiguous sentences with different types of semantic bias were constructed. The degree of bias in each sentence was evaluated through visual presentation experiments. Three types of sentences were selected based on the results of visual presentation experiments, were recorded with prosody maximally favoring each possible interpretation of the sentences, and were used as the stimuli for the auditory presentation experiments. The results showed that prosodic cues can influence the interpretation of a sentence even when the sentence is strongly semantically biased. The results also showed a limitation to prosodic cues. The prosodic biases alone were not sufficient to fully determine the interpretation of the sentences even when the sentences were neutrally biased semantically.}, Doi = {10.1023/a:1025065700451}, Key = {fds304693} } @article{fds304694, Author = {Jincho, N and Namiki, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Effects of verbal working memory and cumulative linguistic knowledge on reading comprehension}, Journal = {Japanese Psychological Research}, Volume = {50}, Number = {1}, Pages = {12-23}, Publisher = {WILEY}, Year = {2008}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0021-5368}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5884.2007.00358.x}, Abstract = {In the present study, the effects of verbal working memory (VWM) and cumulative linguistic knowledge (CLK) on reading comprehension were investigated using an individual difference approach. We examined whether VWM and CLK are distinct verbal factors and whether each has independent influences on reading comprehension. VWM was tested using the Japanese Reading Span Test (RST). CLK was assessed using information, vocabulary, and similarity subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), as well as with the Hyakurakan kanji reading test. The differences between VWM and CLK were examined using correlation analyses between reading comprehension scores, and digit forward and backward span scores. The results showed that VWM and CLK were independent of each other, and that VWM and CLK independently contributed to reading comprehension. The obtained correlations also showed that CLK was independent of any type of short-term memory, and that the VWM measured using the RST had little correlation with digit span. © Japanese Psychological Association 2008.}, Doi = {10.1111/j.1468-5884.2007.00358.x}, Key = {fds304694} } @article{fds252854, Author = {Jincho, N and Namiki, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Effects of verbal working memory and cumulative linguistic knowledge on reading comprehension}, Journal = {Japanese Psychological Research}, Volume = {51}, Number = {1}, Pages = {12-23}, Year = {2008}, ISSN = {0021-5368}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5884.2007.00358.x}, Abstract = {In the present study, the effects of verbal working memory (VWM) and cumulative linguistic knowledge (CLK) on reading comprehension were investigated using an individual difference approach. We examined whether VWM and CLK are distinct verbal factors and whether each has independent influences on reading comprehension. VWM was tested using the Japanese Reading Span Test (RST). CLK was assessed using information, vocabulary, and similarity subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), as well as with the Hyakurakan kanji reading test. The differences between VWM and CLK were examined using correlation analyses between reading comprehension scores, and digit forward and backward span scores. The results showed that VWM and CLK were independent of each other, and that VWM and CLK independently contributed to reading comprehension. The obtained correlations also showed that CLK was independent of any type of short-term memory, and that the VWM measured using the RST had little correlation with digit span. © Japanese Psychological Association 2008.}, Doi = {10.1111/j.1468-5884.2007.00358.x}, Key = {fds252854} } @article{fds321661, Author = {Hayashi, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Emergence of Japanese infants' prosodic preferences in infant-directed vocabulary.}, Journal = {Developmental Psychology}, Volume = {53}, Number = {1}, Pages = {28-37}, Year = {2017}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000259}, Abstract = {The article examines the role of infant-directed vocabulary (IDV) in infants language acquisition, specifically addressing the question of whether IDV forms that are not prominent in adult language may nonetheless be useful to the process of acquisition. Japanese IDV offers a good test case, as IDV characteristically takes a bisyllabic H(eavy)-L(ight) form that is rare in adult speech. In 5 experiments using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), 8- to 10-month-old Japanese infants, but not 4- to 6-month-olds, were found to show a preference for bisyllabic H-L words over other types of words. These results demonstrate (a) that infants may develop a preference for a dominant prosodic form based on infant-directed speech, even when it is not a prominent characteristic of adult language; and perhaps more importantly, and (b) that infant-directed speech may provide a boost for a feature that could be useful for infants' acquisition of language even when it not prominent in adult language. (PsycINFO Database Record}, Doi = {10.1037/dev0000259}, Key = {fds321661} } @article{fds252799, Author = {Tsuji, S and Mazuka, R and Cristia, A and Fikkert, P}, Title = {Even at 4 months, a labial is a good enough coronal, but not vice versa.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {134}, Pages = {252-256}, Year = {2015}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {0010-0277}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.10.009}, Abstract = {Numerous studies have revealed an asymmetry tied to the perception of coronal place of articulation: participants accept a labial mispronunciation of a coronal target, but not vice versa. Whether or not this asymmetry is based on language-general properties or arises from language-specific experience has been a matter of debate. The current study suggests a bias of the first type by documenting an early, cross-linguistic asymmetry related to coronal place of articulation. Japanese and Dutch 4- and 6-month-old infants showed evidence of discrimination if they were habituated to a labial and then tested on a coronal sequence, but not vice versa. This finding has important implications for both phonological theories and infant speech perception research.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2014.10.009}, Key = {fds252799} } @article{fds325710, Author = {Hirose, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Exploiting Pitch Accent Information in Compound Processing: A Comparison between Adults and 6- to 7-Year-Old Children}, Journal = {Language Learning and Development}, Volume = {13}, Number = {4}, Pages = {375-394}, Publisher = {Informa UK Limited}, Year = {2017}, Month = {October}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2017.1292141}, Abstract = {A noun can be potentially ambiguous as to whether it is a head on its own, or is a modifier of a Noun + Noun compound waiting for its head. This study investigates whether young children can exploit the prosodic information on a modifier constituent preceding the head to facilitate resolution of such ambiguity in Japanese. Evidence from English suggests that young speakers are not sensitive to compound stress in distinguishing between compounds and syntactic phrases unless the compound is very familiar (Good, 2008; Vogel & Raimy, 2002). This study concerns whether children in general have such limited capability to use prosodic cues to promptly compute a compound representation without the lexical boost, or whether they might show greater sensitivity to more categorical compound prosody such as that associated with the Compound Accent Rule (CAR) in Japanese. A previous study (Hirose & Mazuka, 2015) demonstrated that adult Japanese speakers can predict the compound structure prior to the head if the prosodic information on the modifier unambiguously signals that the CAR is being applied. The present study conducted the same on-line experiment with children (6- to 7-year-olds) and compared the time course of the effects with that of adults using permutation-based analysis (Maris & Oosternveld, 2007). The results reveal that children are sensitive to pitch accent information that facilitates the quicker processing of the compound or the single head noun representation compared to when such prosodic signals are less apparent, depending on the type of the lexical accent of the noun in question.}, Doi = {10.1080/15475441.2017.1292141}, Key = {fds325710} } @article{fds335699, Author = {YOSHIOKA, K and HAYASHI, A and DEGUCHI, T and MAZUKA, R}, Title = {Four to ten month-old infants' sensitivity to the rhythmic pattern of Japanese baby-words}, Journal = {日本音響学会研究発表会講演論文集}, Volume = {1998}, Number = {1}, Pages = {377-378}, Year = {1998}, Month = {March}, Key = {fds335699} } @article{fds252822, Author = {Yokoyama, H and Niwa, S and Itoh, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Fractal property of eye movements in schizophrenia.}, Journal = {Biological Cybernetics}, Volume = {75}, Number = {2}, Pages = {137-140}, Year = {1996}, Month = {August}, ISSN = {0340-1200}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8855352}, Abstract = {On the basis of a temporal model of animal behavior we conducted temporal analysis of eye movements in schizophrenic subjects (n = 10) and normal controls (n = 10). We found a fractal property in schizophrenic subjects, the fixation time of eye movement during reading ambiguous and difficult sentences showing a clear inverse power law distribution. An exponential distribution of a nonfractal nature was found in normal controls.}, Doi = {10.1007/s004220050281}, Key = {fds252822} } @article{fds252843, Author = {Sato, Y and Mori, K and Koizumi, T and Minagawa-Kawai, Y and Tanaka, A and Ozawa, E and Wakaba, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Functional lateralization of speech processing in adults and children who stutter.}, Journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, Volume = {2}, Pages = {70}, Year = {2011}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21687442}, Abstract = {Developmental stuttering is a speech disorder in fluency characterized by repetitions, prolongations, and silent blocks, especially in the initial parts of utterances. Although their symptoms are motor related, people who stutter show abnormal patterns of cerebral hemispheric dominance in both anterior and posterior language areas. It is unknown whether the abnormal functional lateralization in the posterior language area starts during childhood or emerges as a consequence of many years of stuttering. In order to address this issue, we measured the lateralization of hemodynamic responses in the auditory cortex during auditory speech processing in adults and children who stutter, including preschoolers, with near-infrared spectroscopy. We used the analysis-resynthesis technique to prepare two types of stimuli: (i) a phonemic contrast embedded in Japanese spoken words (/itta/ vs. /itte/) and (ii) a prosodic contrast (/itta/ vs. /itta?/). In the baseline blocks, only /itta/ tokens were presented. In phonemic contrast blocks, /itta/ and /itte/ tokens were presented pseudo-randomly, and /itta/ and /itta?/ tokens in prosodic contrast blocks. In adults and children who do not stutter, there was a clear left-hemispheric advantage for the phonemic contrast compared to the prosodic contrast. Adults and children who stutter, however, showed no significant difference between the two stimulus conditions. A subject-by-subject analysis revealed that not a single subject who stutters showed a left advantage in the phonemic contrast over the prosodic contrast condition. These results indicate that the functional lateralization for auditory speech processing is in disarray among those who stutter, even at preschool age. These results shed light on the neural pathophysiology of developmental stuttering.}, Doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00070}, Key = {fds252843} } @article{fds360574, Author = {Ludusan, B and Cristia, A and Mazuka, R and Dupoux, E}, Title = {How much does prosody help word segmentation? A simulation study on infant-directed speech.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {219}, Pages = {104961}, Year = {2022}, Month = {February}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104961}, Abstract = {Infants come to learn several hundreds of word forms by two years of age, and it is possible this involves carving these forms out from continuous speech. It has been proposed that the task is facilitated by the presence of prosodic boundaries. We revisit this claim by running computational models of word segmentation, with and without prosodic information, on a corpus of infant-directed speech. We use five cognitively-based algorithms, which vary in whether they employ a sub-lexical or a lexical segmentation strategy and whether they are simple heuristics or embody an ideal learner. Results show that providing expert-annotated prosodic breaks does not uniformly help all segmentation models. The sub-lexical algorithms, which perform more poorly, benefit most, while the lexical ones show a very small gain. Moreover, when prosodic information is derived automatically from the acoustic cues infants are known to be sensitive to, errors in the detection of the boundaries lead to smaller positive effects, and even negative ones for some algorithms. This shows that even though infants could potentially use prosodic breaks, it does not necessarily follow that they should incorporate prosody into their segmentation strategies, when confronted with realistic signals.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104961}, Key = {fds360574} } @article{fds367412, Author = {Hitczenko, K and Mazuka, R and Elsner, M and Feldman, NH}, Title = {How to use context to disambiguate overlapping categories: The test case of Japanese vowel length}, Journal = {Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2018}, Pages = {499-504}, Year = {2018}, Month = {January}, ISBN = {9780991196784}, Abstract = {Infants learn the sound categories of their language and adults successfully process the sounds they hear, even though sound categories often overlap in their acoustics. Most researchers agree that listeners use context to disambiguate overlapping categories. However, they differ in their ideas about how context is used. One idea is that listeners normalize out the systematic effects of context from the acoustics of a sound. Another idea is that contextual information may itself be an informative cue to category membership, due to patterns in the types of contexts that particular sounds occur in. We directly contrast these two ways of using context by applying each one to the test case of Japanese vowel length. We find that normalizing out contextual variability from the acoustics does not improve categorization, but using context in a top-down fashion does so substantially. This reveals a limitation of normalization in phonetic acquisition and processing and suggests that approaches that make use of top-down contextual information are promising to pursue.}, Key = {fds367412} } @article{fds362820, Author = {Takahasi, M and Okanoya, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {How vocal temporal parameters develop: A comparative study between humans and songbirds, two distantly related vocal learners}, Journal = {Journal of Language Evolution}, Volume = {6}, Number = {1}, Pages = {26-36}, Year = {2021}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzaa008}, Abstract = {Human infants acquire motor patterns for speech during the first several years of their lives. Sequential vocalizations such as human speech are complex behaviors, and the ability to learn new vocalizations is limited to only a few animal species. Vocalizations are generated through the coordination of three types of organs: namely, vocal, respiratory, and articulatory organs. Moreover, sophisticated temporal respiratory control might be necessary for sequential vocalization involving human speech. However, it remains unknown how coordination develops in human infants and if this developmental process is shared with other vocal learners. To answer these questions, we analyzed temporal parameters of sequential vocalizations during the first year in human infants and compared these developmental changes to song development in the Bengalese finch, another vocal learner. In human infants, early cry was also analyzed as an innate sequential vocalization. The following three temporal parameters of sequential vocalizations were measured: note duration (ND), inter-onset interval, and inter-note interval (INI). The results showed that both human infants and Bengalese finches had longer INIs than ND in the early phase. Gradually, the INI and ND converged to a similar range throughout development. While ND increased until 6 months of age in infants, the INI decreased up to 60 days posthatching in finches. Regarding infant cry, ND and INI were within similar ranges, but the INI was more stable in length than ND. In sequential vocalizations, temporal parameters developed early with subsequent articulatory stabilization in both vocal learners. However, this developmental change was accomplished in a species-specific manner. These findings could provide important insights into our understanding of the evolution of vocal learning.}, Doi = {10.1093/jole/lzaa008}, Key = {fds362820} } @article{fds252834, Author = {Nakamura, C and Arai, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Immediate use of prosody and context in predicting a syntactic structure}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {125}, Number = {3}, Pages = {413-428}, Year = {2012}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22901508}, Abstract = {Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information. Importantly, the effect was limited to cases where the visual scene provided an appropriate context for the prosodic cue, thus eliminating the explanation that listeners have simply associated marked prosodic information with a less frequent structure. Furthermore, the influence of the prosodic information was also evident following disambiguating information, in a way that reflected the initial analysis. The current study demonstrates that prosody, when provided with an appropriate context, influences the initial syntactic analysis and also the subsequent cost at disambiguating information. The results also provide first evidence for pre-head structural prediction driven by prosodic and contextual information with a head-final construction.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.016}, Key = {fds252834} } @article{fds304695, Author = {Nakamura, C and Arai, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Immediate use of prosody and context in predicting a syntactic structure.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {125}, Number = {2}, Pages = {317-323}, Year = {2012}, Month = {November}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22901508}, Abstract = {Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information. Importantly, the effect was limited to cases where the visual scene provided an appropriate context for the prosodic cue, thus eliminating the explanation that listeners have simply associated marked prosodic information with a less frequent structure. Furthermore, the influence of the prosodic information was also evident following disambiguating information, in a way that reflected the initial analysis. The current study demonstrates that prosody, when provided with an appropriate context, influences the initial syntactic analysis and also the subsequent cost at disambiguating information. The results also provide first evidence for pre-head structural prediction driven by prosodic and contextual information with a head-final construction.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.016}, Key = {fds304695} } @article{fds359902, Author = {Jincho, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Individual differences in sentence processing: Effects of verbal working memory and cumulative linguistic knowledge}, Volume = {38}, Pages = {49-65}, Booktitle = {Processing and producing head-final structures, Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 38}, Publisher = {Springer}, Editor = {H. Yamashita and Y. Hirose and J. L. Packard}, Year = {2011}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_3}, Abstract = {The present study investigates individual differences in sentence processing. The Verbal Working Memory (VWM) model and the Two Factor Model, involving VWM and Cumulative Linguistic Knowledge (CLK), are compared in three self-paced reading experiments, in which ditransitive sentences containing high/low-frequency words (Exp. 1) and canonical/scrambled transitive verb sentences (Exp. 2, Exp. 3) are presented. Results favor the Two Factor model over the VWM model: The contributions of VWM and CLK to sentence processing are independent of each other. Two types of demands on VWM, temporal syntactic ambiguity and filler-gap dependency, are mediated by readers’ VWM capacity in scrambled sentences. CLK mediates lexical frequency effect and structural frequency effect on reading time and comprehension accuracy. We also find an interaction between VWM capacity and CLK in distant scrambling sentences, which suggests that CLK and VWM share the same cognitive resource.}, Doi = {10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_3}, Key = {fds359902} } @article{fds252849, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {Infant speech perception and language acquisition (In Japanese;Nyuuji no onsei chikaku to gengo kakutoku)}, Journal = {Life Science (In Japanese; Seitai No Kagaku)}, Volume = {59}, Number = {5}, Pages = {448-449}, Year = {2008}, Key = {fds252849} } @article{fds318738, Author = {Mazuka, R and Igarashi, Y and Martin, A and Utsugi, A}, Title = {Infant-directed speech as a window into the dynamic nature of phonology}, Journal = {Laboratory Phonology}, Volume = {6}, Number = {3-4}, Pages = {281-303}, Publisher = {WALTER DE GRUYTER GMBH}, Year = {2015}, Month = {October}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lp-2015-0009}, Abstract = {Theoretical frameworks of phonology are built largely on the basis of idealized speech, typically recorded in a laboratory under static conditions. Natural speech, in contrast, occurs in a variety of communicative contexts where speakers and hearers dynamically adjust their speech to fit their needs. The present paper demonstrates that phonologically informed analysis of specialized speech registers, such as infant-directed speech, can reveal specific ways segmental and supra-segmental aspects of phonology are modulated dynamically to accommodate the specific communicative needs of speakers and hearers. Data for the analyses come from a corpus of Japanese mothers' spontaneous speech directed to their infant child (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult (adult-directed speech, ADS), as well as read speech (RS). The speech samples in the corpus are annotated with segmental, morphological, and intonational information. We will show that the way intonation is exaggerated in Japanese IDS reflects the intonational structure of Japanese, which is different from that of English. We will also demonstrate that rules of phonological grammar, such as devoicing of high vowels and non-high vowels in Japanese, can be differently affected by the needs of the speaker to accommodate the specific characteristics of the listener.}, Doi = {10.1515/lp-2015-0009}, Key = {fds318738} } @article{fds252837, Author = {Ito, K and Jincho, N and Minai, U and Yamane, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Intonation facilitates contrast resolution: Evidence from Japanese adults and 6-year olds}, Journal = {Journal of Memory and Language}, Volume = {66}, Number = {1}, Pages = {265-284}, Publisher = {Elsevier BV}, Year = {2012}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {0749-596X}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.09.002}, Abstract = {Two eye-tracking experiments tested how pitch prominence on a prenominal adjective affects contrast resolution in Japanese adult and 6-year old listeners. Participants located two animals in succession on displays with multiple colored animals. In Experiment 1, adults' fixations to the contrastive target (pink cat → GREEN cat) were facilitated by a pitch expansion on the adjective while infelicitous pitch expansion (purple rabbit → ORANGE monkey) led to a garden-path effect, i.e., frequent fixations to the incorrect target (orange rabbit). In 6-year olds, only the facilitation effect surfaced. Hypothesizing that the interval between the two questions may not have given enough time for children to overcome their tendency to perseverate on the first target, Experiment 2 used longer intervals and confirmed a garden-path effect in 6-year olds. These results demonstrate that Japanese 6-year olds can make use of contrast-marking pitch prominence when time allows an establishment of proper discourse representation. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2011.09.002}, Key = {fds252837} } @article{fds252815, Author = {Tajima, K and Tanaka, K and Martin, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Is the mora rhythm of Japanese more strongly observed in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech?}, Journal = {Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics}, Volume = {19}, Number = {5}, Pages = {3341}, Year = {2013}, ISSN = {1939-800X}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4800508}, Abstract = {Japanese has traditionally been called "mora-timed", but studies have shown that this intuition is based not on durational tendencies but rather on phonological, structural factors in the language. Meanwhile, infant-directed speech (IDS) is said to "exaggerate" certain properties of adult-directed speech (ADS), including rhythm. If so, then it is possible that the mora rhythm of Japanese is more strongly observed in IDS than ADS. To investigate this possibility, the present study utilized the RIKEN Japanese Mother-Infant Conversation Corpus, which contains approximately 11 hours of IDS by 22 mothers talking with their 18-to-24-month-old infants, and 3 hours of ADS by the same mothers. Results from durational analyses showed that aspects of mora rhythm, such as the distinction between phonemically short and long vowels and singleton and geminate consonants, and the tendency toward isochrony of moras, were not greater in IDS than ADS. Mora duration in IDS was highly variable, partly stemming from greater phrase-final lengthening and non-phonemic, emphatic lengthening. Results from structural analysis, however, showed that non-CV moras such as nasal moras that characterize Japanese rhythm occurred more frequently in IDS than ADS. These results suggest that even in IDS, Japanese rhythm is manifested structurally, not durationally. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.}, Doi = {10.1121/1.4800508}, Key = {fds252815} } @article{fds252801, Author = {Tajima, K and Tanaka, K and Martin, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Is the vowel length contrast in japanese exaggerated in infant-directed speech?}, Journal = {Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech}, Pages = {3211-3215}, Year = {2013}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {2308-457X}, Abstract = {Vowel length contrasts in Japanese, e.g., chizu "map" vs. chiizu "cheese", are cued primarily by vowel duration. However, since short and long vowel durations overlap considerably in ordinary speech, learning to perceive vowel length contrasts is complex. Meanwhile, infant-directed speech (IDS) is known to "exaggerate" certain properties of adult-directed speech (ADS). If so, then it is possible that vowel length contrasts might also be exaggerated in IDS. To investigate this, the present study analyzed vowel durations in the RIKEN Japanese Mother-Infant Conversation Corpus, which contains 11 hours of IDS by 22 mothers talking with their 18-to-24-month-old infants, and 3 hours of ADS by the same mothers. Results indicated that vowel length contrasts were generally not exaggerated in IDS, except at the end of prosodic phrases. Furthermore, several factors that systematically affected vowel duration in IDS were identified, including phrase-final lengthening and "non-lexical lengthening", i.e., the lengthening of vowels for emphatic or other stylistic purposes. These results suggest that vowel duration in Japanese IDS could not only potentially facilitate learning of lexical distinctions, but also signal phrase boundaries, emphasis, or other communicative functions. Copyright © 2013 ISCA.}, Key = {fds252801} } @article{fds371461, Author = {Choi, Y and Nam, M and Yamane, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Lack of early sensitivity and gradual emergence of native phoneme categories: A pattern from underrepresented language learners.}, Journal = {Developmental Science}, Pages = {e13422}, Year = {2023}, Month = {June}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc.13422}, Abstract = {Perceptual narrowing of speech perception supposes that young infants can discriminate most speech sounds early in life. During the second half of the first year, infants' phonetic sensitivity is attuned to their native phonology. However, supporting evidence for this pattern comes primarily from learners from a limited number of regions and languages. Very little evidence has accumulated on infants learning languages spoken in Asia, which accounts for most of the world's population. The present study examined the developmental trajectory of Korean-learning infants' sensitivity to a native stop contrast during the first year of life. The Korean language utilizes unusual voiceless three-way stop categories, requiring target categories to be derived from tight phonetic space. Further, two of these categories-lenis and aspirated-have undergone a diachronic change in recent decades as the primary acoustic cue for distinction has shifted among modern speakers. Consequently, the input distributions of these categories are mixed across speakers and speech styles, requiring learners to build flexible representations of target categories along these variations. The results showed that among the three age groups-4-6 months, 7-9 months, and 10-12 months-we tested, only 10-12-month-olds showed weak sensitivity to the two categories, suggesting that robust discrimination is not in place by the end of the first year. The study adds scarcely represented data, lending additional support for the lack of early sensitivity and prolonged emergence of native phonology that are inconsistent with learners of predominant studies and calls for more diverse samples to verify the generality of the typical perceptual narrowing pattern. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We investigated Korean-learning infants' developmental trajectory of native phoneme categories and whether they show the typical perceptual narrowing pattern. Robust discrimination did not appear until 12 months, suggesting that Korean infants' native phonology is not stabilized by the end of the first year. The prolonged emergence of sensitivity could be due to restricted phonetic space and input variations but suggests the possibility of a different developmental trajectory. The current study contributes scarcely represented Korean-learning infants' phonetic discrimination data to the speech development field.}, Doi = {10.1111/desc.13422}, Key = {fds371461} } @article{fds365540, Author = {Peter, V and van Ommen, S and Kalashnikova, M and Mazuka, R and Nazzi, T and Burnham, D}, Title = {Language specificity in cortical tracking of speech rhythm at the mora, syllable, and foot levels.}, Journal = {Scientific Reports}, Volume = {12}, Number = {1}, Pages = {13477}, Year = {2022}, Month = {August}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17401-x}, Abstract = {Recent research shows that adults' neural oscillations track the rhythm of the speech signal. However, the extent to which this tracking is driven by the acoustics of the signal, or by language-specific processing remains unknown. Here adult native listeners of three rhythmically different languages (English, French, Japanese) were compared on their cortical tracking of speech envelopes synthesized in their three native languages, which allowed for coding at each of the three language's dominant rhythmic unit, respectively the foot (2.5 Hz), syllable (5 Hz), or mora (10 Hz) level. The three language groups were also tested with a sequence in a non-native language, Polish, and a non-speech vocoded equivalent, to investigate possible differential speech/nonspeech processing. The results first showed that cortical tracking was most prominent at 5 Hz (syllable rate) for all three groups, but the French listeners showed enhanced tracking at 5 Hz compared to the English and the Japanese groups. Second, across groups, there were no differences in responses for speech versus non-speech at 5 Hz (syllable rate), but there was better tracking for speech than for non-speech at 10 Hz (not the syllable rate). Together these results provide evidence for both language-general and language-specific influences on cortical tracking.}, Doi = {10.1038/s41598-022-17401-x}, Key = {fds365540} } @article{fds318736, Author = {Tsuji, S and Fikkert, P and Yamane, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Language-general biases and language-specific experience contribute to phonological detail in toddlers' word representations.}, Journal = {Developmental Psychology}, Volume = {52}, Number = {3}, Pages = {379-390}, Year = {2016}, Month = {March}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000093}, Abstract = {Although toddlers in their 2nd year of life generally have phonologically detailed representations of words, a consistent lack of sensitivity to certain kinds of phonological changes has been reported. The origin of these insensitivities is poorly understood, and uncovering their cause is crucial for obtaining a complete picture of early phonological development. The present study explored the origins of the insensitivity to the change from coronal to labial consonants. In cross-linguistic research, we assessed to what extent this insensitivity is language-specific (or would show both in learners of Dutch and a very different language like Japanese), and contrast/direction-specific to the coronal-to-labial change (or would also extend to the coronal-to-dorsal change). We measured Dutch and Japanese 18-month-old toddlers' sensitivity to labial and dorsal mispronunciations of newly learned coronal-initial words. Both Dutch and Japanese toddlers showed reduced sensitivity to the coronal-to-labial change, although this effect was more pronounced in Dutch toddlers. The lack of sensitivity was also specific to the coronal-to-labial change because toddlers from both language backgrounds were highly sensitive to dorsal mispronunciations. Combined with results from previous studies, the present outcomes are most consistent with an early, language-general bias specific to the coronal-to-labial change, which is modified by the properties of toddlers' early, language-specific lexicon.}, Doi = {10.1037/dev0000093}, Key = {fds318736} } @article{fds252824, Author = {Imai, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Language-relative construal of individuation constrained by universal ontology: revisiting language universals and linguistic relativity.}, Journal = {Cognitive Science}, Volume = {31}, Number = {3}, Pages = {385-413}, Year = {2007}, Month = {May}, ISSN = {0364-0213}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21635302}, Abstract = {Objects and substances bear fundamentally different ontologies. In this article, we examine the relations between language, the ontological distinction with respect to individuation, and the world. Specifically, in cross-linguistic developmental studies that follow Imai and Gentner (1997), we examine the question of whether language influences our thought in different forms, like (1) whether the language-specific construal of entities found in a word extension context (Imai & Gentner, 1997) is also found in a nonlinguistic classification context; (2) whether the presence of labels per se, independent of the count-mass syntax, fosters ontology-based classification; (3) in what way, if at all, the count-mass syntax that accompanies a label changes English speakers' default construal of a given entity? On the basis of the results, we argue that the ontological distinction concerning individuation is universally shared and functions as a constraint on early learning of words. At the same time, language influences one's construal of entities cross-lingistically and developmentally, and causes a temporary change of construal within a single language. We provide a detailed discussion of how each of these three ways language may affect the construal of entities, and discuss how our universally possessed knowledge interacts with language both within a single language and in cross-linguistic context.}, Doi = {10.1080/15326900701326436}, Key = {fds252824} } @article{fds318735, Author = {Ludusan, B and Cristia, A and Martin, A and Mazuka, R and Dupoux, E}, Title = {Learnability of prosodic boundaries: Is infant-directed speech easier?}, Journal = {The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America}, Volume = {140}, Number = {2}, Pages = {1239}, Year = {2016}, Month = {August}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4960576}, Abstract = {This study explores the long-standing hypothesis that the acoustic cues to prosodic boundaries in infant-directed speech (IDS) make those boundaries easier to learn than those in adult-directed speech (ADS). Three cues (pause duration, nucleus duration, and pitch change) were investigated, by means of a systematic review of the literature, statistical analyses of a corpus of Japanese, and machine learning experiments. The review of previous work revealed that the effect of register on boundary cues is less well established than previously thought, and that results often vary across studies for certain cues. Statistical analyses run on a large database of mother-child and mother-interviewer interactions showed that the duration of a pause and the duration of the syllable nucleus preceding the boundary are two cues which are enhanced in IDS, while f0 change is actually degraded in IDS. Supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques applied to these acoustic cues revealed that IDS boundaries were consistently better classified than ADS ones, regardless of the learning method used. The role of the cues examined in this study and the importance of these findings in the more general context of early linguistic structure acquisition is discussed.}, Doi = {10.1121/1.4960576}, Key = {fds318735} } @article{fds252838, Author = {Bion, RAH and Miyazawa, K and Kikuchi, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Learning phonemic vowel length from naturalistic recordings of Japanese infant-directed speech.}, Journal = {Plos One}, Volume = {8}, Number = {2}, Pages = {e51594}, Year = {2013}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23437036}, Abstract = {In Japanese, vowel duration can distinguish the meaning of words. In order for infants to learn this phonemic contrast using simple distributional analyses, there should be reliable differences in the duration of short and long vowels, and the frequency distribution of vowels must make these differences salient enough in the input. In this study, we evaluate these requirements of phonemic learning by analyzing the duration of vowels from over 11 hours of Japanese infant-directed speech. We found that long vowels are substantially longer than short vowels in the input directed to infants, for each of the five oral vowels. However, we also found that learning phonemic length from the overall distribution of vowel duration is not going to be easy for a simple distributional learner, because of the large base-rate effect (i.e., 94% of vowels are short), and because of the many factors that influence vowel duration (e.g., intonational phrase boundaries, word boundaries, and vowel height). Therefore, a successful learner would need to take into account additional factors such as prosodic and lexical cues in order to discover that duration can contrast the meaning of words in Japanese. These findings highlight the importance of taking into account the naturalistic distributions of lexicons and acoustic cues when modeling early phonemic learning.}, Doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0051594}, Key = {fds252838} } @article{fds252830, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {Learning the sound system of Japanese: What does it tell us about language acquisition?}, Journal = {20th International Congress on Acoustics 2010, Ica 2010 Incorporating Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society}, Volume = {5}, Pages = {4186-4193}, Year = {2010}, Month = {December}, Abstract = {Infants learn much about the phonology of their own language during the first year of their lives. To date, however, the vast majority of the research on infant speech perception has been carried out with infants learning English and other European languages, and we know very little about how infants learning other languages learn the sound system of their languages. The phonological characteristics of Japanese differ from English and other European languages in important ways, and investigation of its acquisition has a potential of shedding important light onto our understanding of phonological acquisition. In this paper, we present data from Japanese are presented to exemplify this point; acquisition of mora-timed rhythm, edge-prominent prosody, lexical pitch-accent and segmental distribution.}, Key = {fds252830} } @article{fds335697, Author = {Horie, R and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Learning variation of deterministic chaos in auditory signals}, Journal = {Neuroscience Research}, Volume = {68}, Pages = {e407-e407}, Publisher = {Elsevier BV}, Year = {2010}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1804}, Doi = {10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1804}, Key = {fds335697} } @article{fds252860, Author = {Mazuka, R and Friedman, RS}, Title = {Linguistic relativity in Japanese and English: Is language the primary determinant in object classification}, Journal = {Journal of East Asian Linguistics}, Volume = {9}, Number = {4}, Pages = {353-377}, Year = {2000}, Month = {January}, ISSN = {0925-8558}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008356620617}, Abstract = {In the present study, we tested claims by Lucy (1992a, 1992b) that differences between the number marking systems used by Yucatec Maya and English lead speakers of these languages to differentially attend to either the material composition or the shape of objects. In order to evaluate Lucy's hypothesis, we replicated his critical object classification experiment using speakers of English and Japanese, a language with a number marking system very similar to that employed by Yucatec Maya. Our results failed to replicate Lucy's findings. Both Japanese and English speakers, who were comparable in their cultural and educational backgrounds, classified objects more on the basis of shape than material composition, suggesting that Lucy's original findings may have resulted not from differences between the number marking systems of Yucatec Maya and English but rather from differences in the cultural and educational backgrounds of his experimental groups. Alternative accounts of the cognitive consequences of inter-linguistic differences in number marking systems are discussed. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.}, Doi = {10.1023/A:1008356620617}, Key = {fds252860} } @article{fds252795, Author = {Martin, A and Schatz, T and Versteegh, M and Miyazawa, K and Mazuka, R and Dupoux, E and Cristia, A}, Title = {Mothers speak less clearly to infants than to adults: a comprehensive test of the hyperarticulation hypothesis.}, Journal = {Psychological Science}, Volume = {26}, Number = {3}, Pages = {341-347}, Year = {2015}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0956-7976}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614562453}, Abstract = {Infants learn language at an incredible speed, and one of the first steps in this voyage is learning the basic sound units of their native languages. It is widely thought that caregivers facilitate this task by hyperarticulating when speaking to their infants. Using state-of-the-art speech technology, we addressed this key theoretical question: Are sound categories clearer in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech? A comprehensive examination of sound contrasts in a large corpus of recorded, spontaneous Japanese speech demonstrates that there is a small but significant tendency for contrasts in infant-directed speech to be less clear than those in adult-directed speech. This finding runs contrary to the idea that caregivers actively enhance phonetic categories in infant-directed speech. These results suggest that to be plausible, theories of infants' language acquisition must posit an ability to learn from noisy data.}, Doi = {10.1177/0956797614562453}, Key = {fds252795} } @article{fds347028, Author = {Ludusan, B and Jorschick, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Nasal consonant discrimination in infant- And adult-directed speech}, Journal = {Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech}, Volume = {2019-September}, Pages = {3584-3588}, Year = {2019}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2019-1737}, Abstract = {Infant-directed speech (IDS) is thought to play a facilitating role in language acquisition, by simplifying the input infants receive. In particular, the hypothesis that the acoustic level is enhanced to make the input more clear for infants, has been extensively studied in the case of vowels, but less so in the case of consonants. An investigation into how nasal consonants can be discriminated in infant- compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) was performed, on a corpus of Japanese mother-infant spontaneous conversations, by examining all bilabial and alveolar nasals occurring in intervocalic position. The Pearson correlation between corresponding spectrum slices of nasal consonants, in identical vowel contexts, was employed as similarity measure and a statistical model was fit using this information. It revealed a decrease in similarity between the nasal classes, in IDS compared to ADS, although the effect was not statistically significant. We confirmed these results, using an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to discriminate between the two nasal classes, obtaining similar classification performance in IDS and ADS. We discuss our findings in the context of the current literature on infant-directed speech.}, Doi = {10.21437/Interspeech.2019-1737}, Key = {fds347028} } @article{fds252844, Author = {Minagawa-Kawai, Y and van der Lely, H and Ramus, F and Sato, Y and Mazuka, R and Dupoux, E}, Title = {Optical brain imaging reveals general auditory and language-specific processing in early infant development.}, Journal = {Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)}, Volume = {21}, Number = {2}, Pages = {254-261}, Year = {2011}, Month = {February}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20497946}, Abstract = {This study uses near-infrared spectroscopy in young infants in order to elucidate the nature of functional cerebral processing for speech. Previous imaging studies of infants' speech perception revealed left-lateralized responses to native language. However, it is unclear if these activations were due to language per se rather than to some low-level acoustic correlate of spoken language. Here we compare native (L1) and non-native (L2) languages with 3 different nonspeech conditions including emotional voices, monkey calls, and phase scrambled sounds that provide more stringent controls. Hemodynamic responses to these stimuli were measured in the temporal areas of Japanese 4 month-olds. The results show clear left-lateralized responses to speech, prominently to L1, as opposed to various activation patterns in the nonspeech conditions. Furthermore, implementing a new analysis method designed for infants, we discovered a slower hemodynamic time course in awake infants. Our results are largely explained by signal-driven auditory processing. However, stronger activations to L1 than to L2 indicate a language-specific neural factor that modulates these responses. This study is the first to discover a significantly higher sensitivity to L1 in 4 month-olds and reveals a neural precursor of the functional specialization for the higher cognitive network.}, Doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhq082}, Key = {fds252844} } @article{fds252814, Author = {Igarashi, Y and Nishikawa, K and Tanaka, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Phonological theory informs the analysis of intonational exaggeration in Japanese infant-directed speech.}, Journal = {The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America}, Volume = {134}, Number = {2}, Pages = {1283-1294}, Year = {2013}, Month = {August}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23927126}, Abstract = {To date, the intonation of infant-directed speech (IDS) has been analyzed without reference to its phonological structure. Intonational phonology should, however, inform IDS research, discovering important properties that have previously been overlooked. The present study investigated "intonational exaggeration" in Japanese IDS using the intonational phonological framework. Although intonational exaggeration, which is most often measured by pitch-range expansion, is one of the best-known characteristics of IDS, Japanese has been reported to lack such exaggeration. The present results demonstrated that intonational exaggeration is in fact present and observed most notably at the location of boundary pitch movements, and that the effects of lexical pitch accents in the remainder of the utterances superficially mask the exaggeration. These results not only reveal dynamic aspects of Japanese IDS, but also in turn contribute to the theory of intonational phonology, suggesting that paralinguistic pitch-range modifications most clearly emerge where the intonation system of a language allows maximum flexibility in varying intonational contours.}, Doi = {10.1121/1.4812755}, Key = {fds252814} } @article{fds252798, Author = {Arai, M and Nakamura, C and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Predicting the unbeaten path through syntactic priming.}, Journal = {Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition}, Volume = {41}, Number = {2}, Pages = {482-500}, Year = {2015}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0278-7393}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038389}, Abstract = {A number of previous studies showed that comprehenders make use of lexically based constraints such as subcategorization frequency in processing structurally ambiguous sentences. One piece of such evidence is lexically specific syntactic priming in comprehension; following the costly processing of a temporarily ambiguous sentence, comprehenders experience less processing difficulty with the same structure with the same verb in subsequent processing. In previous studies using a reading paradigm, however, the effect was observed at or following disambiguating information and it is not known whether a priming effect affects only the process of resolving structural ambiguity following disambiguating input or it also affects the process before ambiguity is resolved. Using a visual world paradigm, the current study addressed this issue with Japanese relative clause sentences. Our results demonstrated that after experiencing the relative clause structure, comprehenders were more likely to predict the usually dispreferred structure immediately upon hearing the same verb. No compatible effect, in contrast, was observed on hearing a different verb. Our results are consistent with the constraint-based lexicalist view, which assumes the parallel activation of possible structural analyses at the verb. Our study demonstrated that an experience of a dispreferred structure activates the structural information in a lexically specific manner, leading comprehenders to predict another instance of the same structure on encountering the same verb.}, Doi = {10.1037/a0038389}, Key = {fds252798} } @article{fds252797, Author = {Hirose, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Predictive processing of novel compounds: evidence from Japanese.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {136}, Pages = {350-358}, Year = {2015}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0010-0277}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.033}, Abstract = {Our study argues that pre-head anticipatory processing operates at a level below the level of the sentence. A visual-world eye-tracking study demonstrated that, in processing of Japanese novel compounds, the compound structure can be constructed prior to the head if the prosodic information on the preceding modifier constituent signals that the Compound Accent Rule (CAR) is being applied. This prosodic cue rules out the single head analysis of the modifier noun, which would otherwise be a natural and economical choice. Once the structural representation for the head is computed in advance, the parser becomes faster in identifying the compound meaning. This poses a challenge to models maintaining that structural integration and word recognition are separate processes. At the same time, our results, together with previous findings, suggest the possibility that there is some degree of staging during the processing of different sources of information during the comprehension of compound nouns.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.033}, Key = {fds252797} } @article{fds304692, Author = {Mazuka, R and Itoh, K and Kondo, T}, Title = {Processing down the garden path in Japanese: processing of sentences with lexical homonyms.}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {26}, Number = {2}, Pages = {207-228}, Year = {1997}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110433}, Abstract = {This paper investigates whether or not Japanese sentences with lexical homonyms cause measurable processing difficulties for Japanese speakers. Pairs of sentences involving lexical homonyms were tested with three types of questionnaires (who-did-what questions, difficulty ratings, and misleadingness ratings) and two experimental tests (an eye-movement monitoring experiment and a self-paced reading experiment). In both the difficulty rating and the misleadingness rating questionnaires, "late boundary" sentences, in which a phrase boundary followed a homonymous phrase, were rated as significantly more difficult and more misleading than "early boundary" sentences, where the boundary preceded the homonymous phrase. The results from the eye-movement study and the self-paced reading study showed that the late boundary difficulties were associated with the processing of the regions that followed the homonymous phrases. These results confirmed our prediction that the difficulty of late boundary sentences is likely to be caused by a subject's original misanalysis and subsequent revision. The results are discussed in terms of possible reasons why the early boundary version was preferred in these sentences.}, Doi = {10.1023/a:1025013716381}, Key = {fds304692} } @article{fds252859, Author = {Mazuka, R and Itoh, K and Kondo, T}, Title = {Processing down the Japanese garden-path sentences}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {26}, Number = {2}, Pages = {207-228}, Year = {1997}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110433}, Abstract = {This paper investigates whether or not Japanese sentences with lexical homonyms cause measurable processing difficulties for Japanese speakers. Pairs of sentences involving lexical homonyms were tested with three types of questionnaires (who-did-what questions, difficulty ratings, and misleadingness ratings) and two experimental tests (an eye-movement monitoring experiment and a self-paced reading experiment). In both the difficulty rating and the misleadingness rating questionnaires, "late boundary" sentences, in which a phrase boundary followed a homonymous phrase, were rated as significantly more difficult and more misleading than "early boundary" sentences, where the boundary preceded the homonymous phrase. The results from the eye-movement study and the self-paced reading study showed that the late boundary difficulties were associated with the processing of the regions that followed the homonymous phrases. These results confirmed our prediction that the difficulty of late boundary sentences is likely to be caused by a subject's original misanalysis and subsequent revision. The results are discussed in terms of possible reasons why the early boundary version was preferred in these sentences.}, Key = {fds252859} } @article{fds252819, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {Processing of empty categories in Japanese}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {20}, Number = {3}, Pages = {215-232}, Publisher = {Springer Nature}, Year = {1991}, Month = {May}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01067216}, Abstract = {Recent experimental research on the processing of empty categories (EC) in English points to the general conclusion that during on-line processing of a sentence, not only is the presence of an EC detected but its linguistically legitimate antecedents are also computed. In this paper, it is argued that, in Japanese, ECs pose serious problems for on-line processing if they are to be processed in a manner similar to English. Initial experimental data indicates that, in Japanese, the processor may not recognize an EC during initial on-line processing of a sentence. It is tentatively suggested that processing of an EC in Japanese may be delayed until after the on-line processing of the structure of a sentence. © 1991 Plenum Publishing Corporation.}, Doi = {10.1007/BF01067216}, Key = {fds252819} } @article{fds252846, Author = {Matsuda, Y-T and Ueno, K and Waggoner, RA and Erickson, D and Shimura, Y and Tanaka, K and Cheng, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Processing of infant-directed speech by adults.}, Journal = {Neuroimage}, Volume = {54}, Number = {1}, Pages = {611-621}, Year = {2011}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20691794}, Abstract = {Adults typically address infants in a special speech mode called infant-directed speech (IDS). IDS is characterized by a special prosody (i.e., higher pitched, slower and hyperarticulated) and a special lexicon ("baby talk"). Here we investigated which areas of the adult brain are involved in processing IDS, which aspects of IDS (prosodic or lexical) are processed, to what extent the experience of being a parent affects the way adults process IDS, and the effects of gender and personality on IDS processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that mothers with preverbal infants showed enhanced activation in the auditory dorsal pathway of the language areas, regardless of whether they listened to the prosodic or lexical component of IDS. We also found that extroverted mothers showed higher cortical activation in speech-related motor areas than did mothers with lower extroverted personality scores. Increased cortical activation levels were not found for fathers, non-parents, or mothers with older children.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.07.072}, Key = {fds252846} } @article{fds335698, Author = {Matsuda, Y and Ueno, K and Waggoner, RA and Erickson, D and Shimura, Y and Tanaka, K and Cheng, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Processing of infant-directed speech in parents: An fMRI study}, Journal = {Neuroscience Research}, Volume = {58}, Pages = {S45-S45}, Publisher = {Elsevier BV}, Year = {2007}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neures.2007.06.265}, Doi = {10.1016/j.neures.2007.06.265}, Key = {fds335698} } @article{fds252820, Author = {Kondo, T and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Prosodic planning while reading aloud: on-line examination of Japanese sentences.}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {25}, Number = {2}, Pages = {357-381}, Year = {1996}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8667303}, Abstract = {In this paper, we discuss the process of generating prosody on-line while reading a sentence orally. We report results from two studies in which eye-voice span was measured while subjects read aloud. In study one, the average eye-voice span for simple texts was only about 2.5 characters. In study two, the eye-voice span was also about 2.5 characters even when the subjects read garden-path sentences which required reanalysis during processing. That the readers looked only a few characters ahead before reading aloud suggests that the prosody which they generate is not based on a global syntactic analysis, but instead reflects only limited, local syntactic information. The subjects, therefore, make errors and repairs when this locally determined prosody obviously contradicts the meaning of the sentence.}, Doi = {10.1007/bf01708578}, Key = {fds252820} } @article{fds325973, Author = {Jincho, N and Oishi, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Referential ambiguity resolution in sentence comprehension: A developmental study measuring eye movements and pupil dilation}, Journal = {The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology}, Volume = {64}, Number = {4}, Pages = {531-543}, Publisher = {The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology}, Year = {2016}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.5926/jjep.64.531}, Abstract = {The present study investigated whether adults and 5-and 6-year-old children could incrementally resolve referential ambiguity of adjective-noun phrases in Japanese. Using a visual world paradigm, the experiment examined whether the proportion of participants' gaze on the referent and their pupil dilations were affected by the timing of disambiguation (pre-nominal adjective or noun). The results indicated that the proportion of the adults' gazes showed a reliable effect of the timing of disambiguation, but this was not found in the results from the children. The 6-year-olds' pupil dilation data showed larger pupil dilations in the adjective disambiguation condition than in the noun disambiguation condition. This suggests that the 6-year-olds also incrementally resolved the referential ambiguity. Furthermore, the adults showed a disambiguation effect, with larger dilations for the noun disambiguations than for the adjective disambiguations. No significant differences were observed in the data from the 5-year-olds. These results suggest that the 6-year-olds and the adults were able to resolve referential ambiguities incrementally, but that the 6-year-olds' eye movement control was not as fully developed as the adults'. In addition, the results suggested that pupil dilations could be a complementary measure of on-line sentence processing. That would be especially advantageous when experimental participants are young children.}, Doi = {10.5926/jjep.64.531}, Key = {fds325973} } @article{fds252855, Author = {Imai, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Revisiting language universals and linguistic relativity: language-relative construal of individuation constrained by universal ontology}, Journal = {Cognitive Science}, Volume = {31}, Pages = {385-414}, Year = {2007}, Key = {fds252855} } @article{fds252811, Author = {Tsuji, S and Nishikawa, K and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns in Japanese infant- and adult-directed speech.}, Journal = {Journal of Child Language}, Volume = {41}, Number = {6}, Pages = {1276-1304}, Year = {2014}, Month = {November}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24229534}, Abstract = {Japanese infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) were compared on their segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns. Consistent with findings in other languages, a higher ratio of segments that are generally produced early was found in IDS compared to ADS: more labial consonants and low-central vowels, but fewer fricatives. Consonant-vowel associations also favored the early produced labial-central, coronal-front, coronal-central, and dorsal-back patterns. On the other hand, clear language-specific patterns included a higher frequency of dorsals, affricates, geminates, and moraic nasals in IDS. These segments are frequent in adult Japanese, but not in the early productions or the IDS of other studied languages. In combination with previous results, the current study suggests that both fine-tuning (an increased use of early produced segments) and highlighting (an increased use of language-specifically relevant segments) might modify IDS on the segmental level.}, Doi = {10.1017/s0305000913000469}, Key = {fds252811} } @article{fds362819, Author = {Iwamoto, K and Kikuchi, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Speech rate development in Japanese-speaking children and proficiency in mora-timed rhythm.}, Journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology}, Volume = {220}, Pages = {105411}, Year = {2022}, Month = {August}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105411}, Abstract = {Development of speech rate is often reported as children exhibiting reduced speech rates until they reach adolescence. Previous studies have investigated the developmental process of speech rate using global measures (syllables per second, syllables per minute, or words per minute) and revealed that development continues up to around 13 years of age in several languages. However, the global measures fail to capture language-specific characteristics of phonological/prosodic structure within a word. The current study attempted to examine the developmental process of speech rate and language-specific rhythm in an elicited production task. We recorded the speech of Japanese-speaking monolingual participants (18 participants each in child [5-, 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old] and adult groups), who pronounced three types of target words: two-mora, two-syllable words (CV.CV); three-mora, two-syllable words (CVV.CV); and three-mora, three-syllable words (CV.CV.CV), where C is consonant and V is vowel. We analyzed total word duration and differences in two pairs of word types: a pair of three-mora words (to show the effect of syllables) and a pair of two-syllable words (to show the effect of moras). The results revealed that Japanese-speaking children have acquired adult-like word duration before 11 years of age, whereas the development of rhythmical timing control continues until approximately 13 years of age. The results also suggest that the effect of syllables for Japanese-speaking children aged 9 years or under was stronger than that of moras, whereas the effect of moras was stronger after 9 years of age, indicating that the default unit for children in speech rhythm may be the syllable even when the language is mora-based.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105411}, Key = {fds362819} } @article{fds252794, Author = {Hawthorne, K and Mazuka, R and Gerken, L}, Title = {The acoustic salience of prosody trumps infants' acquired knowledge of language-specific prosodic patterns.}, Journal = {Journal of Memory and Language}, Volume = {82}, Pages = {105-117}, Year = {2015}, Month = {July}, ISSN = {0749-596X}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2015.03.005}, Abstract = {There is mounting evidence that prosody facilitates grouping the speech stream into syntactically-relevant units (e.g., Hawthorne & Gerken, 2014; Soderstrom, Kemler Nelson, & Jusczyk, 2005). We ask whether prosody's role in syntax acquisition relates to its general acoustic salience or to the learner's acquired knowledge of correlations between prosody and syntax in her native language. English- and Japanese-acquiring 19-month-olds listened to sentences from an artificial grammar with non-native prosody (Japanese or English, respectively), then were tested on their ability to recognize prosodically-marked constituents when the constituents had moved to a new position in the sentence. Both groups were able to use non-native prosody to parse speech into cohesive, reorderable, syntactic constituent-like units. Comparison with Hawthorne & Gerken (2014), in which English-acquiring infants were tested on sentences with English prosody, suggests that 19-month-olds are equally adept at using native and non-native prosody for at least some types of learning tasks and, therefore, that prosody is useful in early syntactic segmentation because of its acoustic salience.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2015.03.005}, Key = {fds252794} } @article{fds302962, Author = {Lust, B and Eisele, J and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The Binding Theory Module: Evidence from First Language Acquisition for Principle C}, Journal = {Language}, Volume = {68}, Number = {2}, Pages = {333-333}, Publisher = {JSTOR}, Year = {1992}, Month = {June}, ISSN = {0097-8507}, url = {http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:A1992JE25800004&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=47d3190e77e5a3a53558812f597b0b92}, Doi = {10.2307/416944}, Key = {fds302962} } @article{fds252845, Author = {Mazuka, R and Cao, Y and Dupoux, E and Christophe, A}, Title = {The development of a phonological illusion: a cross-linguistic study with Japanese and French infants.}, Journal = {Developmental Science}, Volume = {14}, Number = {4}, Pages = {693-699}, Year = {2011}, Month = {July}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21676090}, Abstract = {In adults, native language phonology has strong perceptual effects. Previous work has shown that Japanese speakers, unlike French speakers, break up illegal sequences of consonants with illusory vowels: they report hearing abna as abuna. To study the development of phonological grammar, we compared Japanese and French infants in a discrimination task. In Experiment 1, we observed that 14-month-old Japanese infants, in contrast to French infants, failed to discriminate phonetically varied sets of abna-type and abuna-type stimuli. In Experiment 2, 8-month-old French and Japanese did not differ significantly from each other. In Experiment 3, we found that, like adults, Japanese infants can discriminate abna from abuna when phonetic variability is reduced (single item). These results show that the phonologically induced /u/ illusion is already experienced by Japanese infants at the age of 14 months. Hence, before having acquired many words of their language, they have grasped enough of their native phonological grammar to constrain their perception of speech sound sequences.}, Doi = {10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01015.x}, Key = {fds252845} } @article{fds252816, Author = {Arai, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The development of Japanese passive syntax as indexed by structural priming in comprehension.}, Journal = {Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)}, Volume = {67}, Number = {1}, Pages = {60-78}, Year = {2014}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23663220}, Abstract = {A number of previous studies reported a phenomenon of syntactic priming with young children as evidence for cognitive representations required for processing syntactic structures. However, it remains unclear how syntactic priming reflects children's grammatical competence. The current study investigated structural priming of the Japanese passive structure with 5- and 6-year-old children in a visual-world setting. Our results showed a priming effect as anticipatory eye movements to an upcoming referent in these children but the effect was significantly stronger in magnitude in 6-year-olds than in 5-year-olds. Consistently, the responses to comprehension questions revealed that 6-year-olds produced a greater number of correct answers and more answers using the passive structure than 5-year-olds. We also tested adult participants who showed even stronger priming than the children. The results together revealed that language users with the greater linguistic competence with the passives exhibited stronger priming, demonstrating a tight relationship between the effect of priming and the development of grammatical competence. Furthermore, we found that the magnitude of the priming effect decreased over time. We interpret these results in the light of an error-based learning account. Our results also provided evidence for prehead as well as head-independent priming.}, Doi = {10.1080/17470218.2013.790454}, Key = {fds252816} } @article{fds252847, Author = {Yoshida, KA and Iversen, JR and Patel, AD and Mazuka, R and Nito, H and Gervain, J and Werker, JF}, Title = {The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: a Japanese-English cross-linguistic study.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {115}, Number = {2}, Pages = {356-361}, Year = {2010}, Month = {May}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20144456}, Abstract = {Perceptual grouping has traditionally been thought to be governed by innate, universal principles. However, recent work has found differences in Japanese and English speakers' non-linguistic perceptual grouping, implicating language in non-linguistic perceptual processes (Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Two experiments test Japanese- and English-learning infants of 5-6 and 7-8 months of age to explore the development of grouping preferences. At 5-6 months, neither the Japanese nor the English infants revealed any systematic perceptual biases. However, by 7-8 months, the same age as when linguistic phrasal grouping develops, infants developed non-linguistic grouping preferences consistent with their language's structure (and the grouping biases found in adulthood). These results reveal an early difference in non-linguistic perception between infants growing up in different language environments. The possibility that infants' linguistic phrasal grouping is bootstrapped by abstract perceptual principles is discussed.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2010.01.005}, Key = {fds252847} } @article{fds332177, Author = {Ota, M and Yamane, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese.}, Journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, Volume = {8}, Pages = {2354}, Year = {2017}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02354}, Abstract = {Learners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin) develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English) also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to about 18 months. In this study, we examined if this early-developing capacity to lexically encode pitch variations enables infants to acquire a pitch accent system, in which pitch-based lexical contrasts are obscured by the interaction of lexical and non-lexical (i.e., intonational) features. Eighteen 17-month-olds learning Tokyo Japanese were tested on their recognition of familiar words with the expected pitch or the lexically opposite pitch pattern. In early trials, infants were faster in shifting their eyegaze from the distractor object to the target object than in shifting from the target to distractor in the pitch-matched condition. In later trials, however, infants showed faster distractor-to-target than target-to-distractor shifts in both the pitch-matched and pitch-mismatched conditions. We interpret these results to mean that, in a pitch-accent system, the ability to use pitch variations to recognize words is still in a nascent state at 17 months.}, Doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02354}, Key = {fds332177} } @article{fds252817, Author = {Saikachi, Y and Kitahara, M and Nishikawa, K and Kanato, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The F0 fall delay of lexical pitch accent in Japanese Infant-directed speech}, Journal = {13th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association 2012, Interspeech 2012}, Volume = {3}, Pages = {2485-2488}, Publisher = {ISCA}, Year = {2012}, Month = {December}, ISBN = {9781622767595}, url = {http://www.isca-speech.org/archive/interspeech_2012}, Abstract = {The current study examined the acoustic modifications of the lexical pitch accent in Tokyo Japanese infant-directed speech (IDS), with the focus on the F0 fall delay, where the alignment of the F0 turning points associated with pitch accents were delayed with respect to the accented mora. The RIKEN Mother- Infant Conversation Corpus (R-JMICC) [1] produced by 21 mothers from Tokyo area, was used to investigate the alignment of the F0 turning points. Two-piece linear regression was used to locate the turning points and the frequency of F0 fall delay was computed in IDS and in adult-directed speech (ADS). The results revealed that the frequency of F0 fall delay depended on the syllable structures of the accented syllable as well as the prosodic conditions (the presence of the boundary pitch movements and non-lexical lengthening) typically observed in Japanese IDS. We found significantly more frequent F0 fall delay in IDS compared to ADS, when the prosodic conditions were taken into account. The results indicate that the language specific prosodic structure should be considered in order to characterize the F0 fall delay of lexical pitch accents in IDS.}, Key = {fds252817} } @article{fds252840, Author = {Tsuji, S and Gomez, NG and Medina, V and Nazzi, T and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The labial-coronal effect revisited: Japanese adults say pata, but hear tapa.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {125}, Number = {3}, Pages = {413-428}, Year = {2012}, Month = {December}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22921188}, Abstract = {The labial-coronal effect has originally been described as a bias to initiate a word with a labial consonant-vowel-coronal consonant (LC) sequence. This bias has been explained with constraints on the human speech production system, and its perceptual correlates have motivated the suggestion of a perception-production link. However, previous studies exclusively considered languages in which LC sequences are globally more frequent than their counterpart. The current study examined the LC bias in speakers of Japanese, a language that has been claimed to possess more CL than LC sequences. We first conducted an analysis of Japanese corpora that qualified this claim, and identified a subgroup of consonants (plosives) exhibiting a CL bias. Second, focusing on this subgroup of consonants, we found diverging results for production and perception such that Japanese speakers exhibited an articulatory LC bias, but a perceptual CL bias. The CL perceptual bias, however, was modulated by language of presentation, and was only present for stimuli recorded by a Japanese, but not a French, speaker. A further experiment with native speakers of French showed the opposite effect, with an LC bias for French stimuli only. Overall, we find support for a universal, articulatory motivated LC bias in production, supporting a motor explanation of the LC effect, while perceptual biases are influenced by distributional frequencies of the native language.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.017}, Key = {fds252840} } @article{fds252832, Author = {Kouki, M and Hideaki, M and Hideaki, K and Reiko, M}, Title = {The multi timescale phoneme acquisition model of the self-organizing based on the dynamic features}, Journal = {Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech}, Pages = {749-752}, Year = {2011}, Month = {December}, ISSN = {1990-9772}, Abstract = {It is unclear as to how infants learn the acoustic expression of each phoneme of their native languages. In recent studies, researchers have inspected phoneme acquisition by using a computational model. However, these studies have used a limited vocabulary as input and do not handle a continuous speech that is almost comparable to a natural environment. Therefore, we use a natural continuous speech and build a self-organization model that simulates the cognitive ability of the humans, and we analyze the quality and quantity of the speech information that is necessary for the acquisition of the native phoneme system. Our model is designed to learn values of the acoustic features of a continuous speech and to estimate the number and boundaries of the phoneme categories without using explicit instructions. In a recent study, our model could acquire the detailed vowels of the input language. In this study, we examined the mechanism necessary for an infant to acquire all the phonemes of a language, including consonants. In natural speech, vowels have a stationary feature; hence, our recent model is suitable for learning them. However, learning consonants through the past model is difficult because most consonants have more dynamic features than vowels. To solve this problem, we designed a method to separate "stable" and "dynamic" speech patterns using a feature-extraction method based on the auditory expressions used by human beings. Using this method, we showed that the acquisition of an unstable phoneme was possible without the use of instructions. Copyright © 2011 ISCA.}, Key = {fds252832} } @article{fds252804, Author = {Martin, A and Utsugi, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The multidimensional nature of hyperspeech: evidence from Japanese vowel devoicing.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {132}, Number = {2}, Pages = {216-228}, Year = {2014}, Month = {August}, ISSN = {0010-0277}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.003}, Abstract = {We investigate the hypothesis that infant-directed speech is a form of hyperspeech, optimized for intelligibility, by focusing on vowel devoicing in Japanese. Using a corpus of infant-directed and adult-directed Japanese, we show that speakers implement high vowel devoicing less often when speaking to infants than when speaking to adults, consistent with the hyperspeech hypothesis. The same speakers, however, increase vowel devoicing in careful, read speech, a speech style which might be expected to pattern similarly to infant-directed speech. We argue that both infant-directed and read speech can be considered listener-oriented speech styles-each is optimized for the specific needs of its intended listener. We further show that in non-high vowels, this trend is reversed: speakers devoice more often in infant-directed speech and less often in read speech, suggesting that devoicing in the two types of vowels is driven by separate mechanisms in Japanese.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.003}, Key = {fds252804} } @article{fds351435, Author = {Utsugi, A and Koizumi, M and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The perception of non-native lexical pitch accent by speakers of 'accentless' Japanese dialects}, Journal = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody}, Year = {2010}, Month = {January}, ISBN = {9780000000002}, Abstract = {While Standard (Tokyo) Japanese has a lexical tonal system known as a system of 'lexical pitch accent', there are some varieties of Japanese, called 'accentless' dialects, which do not have any lexical tonal phenomena. We investigated how the speakers of those dialects perceive Standard Japanese accent, which is nonexistent in their native dialect's phonology. The results of the Sequence Recall task showed that their scores were lower than those of control (Standard Japanese) participants. We also found a large variance in the results of 'accentless' participants, which was probably caused by their exposure to Standard Japanese.}, Key = {fds351435} } @article{fds252852, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {The rhythm-based prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis of early language acquisition: Does it work for learning for all languages?}, Journal = {Journal of the Liguistic Society of Japan}, Volume = {9}, Number = {132}, Pages = {1-13}, Year = {2007}, Key = {fds252852} } @article{fds332175, Author = {Mazuka, R and Bernard, M and Cristia, A and Dupoux, E and Ludusan, B}, Title = {The role of prosody and speech register in word segmentation: A computational modelling perspective}, Journal = {Acl 2017 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference (Long Papers)}, Volume = {2}, Pages = {178-183}, Publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics}, Year = {2017}, Month = {January}, ISBN = {9781945626760}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/P17-2028}, Abstract = {This study explores the role of speech register and prosody for the task of word segmentation. Since these two factors are thought to play an important role in early language acquisition, we aim to quantify their contribution for this task. We study a Japanese corpus containing both infant- and adult-directed speech and we apply four different word segmentation models, with and without knowledge of prosodic boundaries. The results showed that the difference between registers is smaller than previously reported and that prosodic boundary information helps more adult- than infant-directed speech.}, Doi = {10.18653/v1/P17-2028}, Key = {fds332175} } @article{fds252803, Author = {Gonzalez-Gomez, N and Hayashi, A and Tsuji, S and Mazuka, R and Nazzi, T}, Title = {The role of the input on the development of the LC bias: a crosslinguistic comparison.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {132}, Number = {3}, Pages = {301-311}, Year = {2014}, Month = {September}, ISSN = {0010-0277}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.004}, Abstract = {Previous studies have described the existence of a phonotactic bias called the Labial-Coronal (LC) bias, corresponding to a tendency to produce more words beginning with a labial consonant followed by a coronal consonant (i.e. "bat") than the opposite CL pattern (i.e. "tap"). This bias has initially been interpreted in terms of articulatory constraints of the human speech production system. However, more recently, it has been suggested that this presumably language-general LC bias in production might be accompanied by LC and CL biases in perception, acquired in infancy on the basis of the properties of the linguistic input. The present study investigates the origins of these perceptual biases, testing infants learning Japanese, a language that has been claimed to possess more CL than LC sequences, and comparing them with infants learning French, a language showing a clear LC bias in its lexicon. First, a corpus analysis of Japanese IDS and ADS revealed the existence of an overall LC bias, except for plosive sequences in ADS, which show a CL bias across counts. Second, speech preference experiments showed a perceptual preference for CL over LC plosive sequences (all recorded by a Japanese speaker) in 13- but not in 7- and 10-month-old Japanese-learning infants (Experiment 1), while revealing the emergence of an LC preference between 7 and 10 months in French-learning infants, using the exact same stimuli. These crosslinguistic behavioral differences, obtained with the same stimuli, thus reflect differences in processing in two populations of infants, which can be linked to differences in the properties of the lexicons of their respective native languages. These findings establish that the emergence of a CL/LC bias is related to exposure to a linguistic input.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.004}, Key = {fds252803} } @article{fds252829, Author = {Miyazawa, K and Kikuchi, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Unsupervised learning of vowels from continuous speech based on self-organized phoneme acquisition model}, Journal = {Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech 2010}, Pages = {2914-2917}, Year = {2010}, Month = {January}, Abstract = {All normal humans can acquire their native phoneme systems simply by living in their native language environment. However, it is unclear as to how infants learn the acoustic expression of each phoneme of their native languages. In recent studies, researchers have inspected phoneme acquisition by using a computational model. However, these studies have used read speech that has a limited vocabulary as input and do not handle a continuous speech that is almost comparable to a natural environment. Therefore, in this study, we use natural continuous speech and build a self-organization model that simulates the cognitive ability of the humans, and we analyze the quality and quantity of the speech information that is necessary for the acquisition of the native vowel system. Our model is designed to learn values of the acoustic characteristic of a natural continuous speech and to estimate the number and boundaries of the vowel categories without using explicit instructions. In the simulation trial, we investigate the relationship between the quantity of learning and the accuracy for the vowels in a single Japanese speaker's natural speech. As a result, it is found that the vowel recognition accuracy of our model is comparable to that of an adult. © 2010 ISCA.}, Key = {fds252829} } @article{fds318734, Author = {Martin, A and Igarashi, Y and Jincho, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Utterances in infant-directed speech are shorter, not slower.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {156}, Pages = {52-59}, Year = {2016}, Month = {November}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.07.015}, Abstract = {It has become a truism in the literature on infant-directed speech (IDS) that IDS is pronounced more slowly than adult-directed speech (ADS). Using recordings of 22 Japanese mothers speaking to their infant and to an adult, we show that although IDS has an overall lower mean speech rate than ADS, this is not the result of an across-the-board slowing in which every vowel is expanded equally. Instead, the speech rate difference is entirely due to the effects of phrase-final lengthening, which disproportionally affects IDS because of its shorter utterances. These results demonstrate that taking utterance-internal prosodic characteristics into account is crucial to studies of speech rate.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2016.07.015}, Key = {fds318734} } @article{fds326609, Author = {Miyazawa, K and Shinya, T and Martin, A and Kikuchi, H and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Vowels in infant-directed speech: More breathy and more variable, but not clearer.}, Journal = {Cognition}, Volume = {166}, Pages = {84-93}, Year = {2017}, Month = {September}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.003}, Abstract = {Infant-directed speech (IDS) is known to differ from adult-directed speech (ADS) in a number of ways, and it has often been argued that some of these IDS properties facilitate infants' acquisition of language. An influential study in support of this view is Kuhl et al. (1997), which found that vowels in IDS are produced with expanded first and second formants (F1/F2) on average, indicating that the vowels are acoustically further apart in IDS than in ADS. These results have been interpreted to mean that the way vowels are produced in IDS makes infants' task of learning vowel categories easier. The present paper revisits this interpretation by means of a thorough analysis of IDS vowels using a large-scale corpus of Japanese natural utterances. We will show that the expansion of F1/F2 values does occur in spontaneous IDS even when the vowels' prosodic position, lexical pitch accent, and lexical bias are accounted for. When IDS vowels are compared to carefully read speech (CS) by the same mothers, however, larger variability among IDS vowel tokens means that the acoustic distances among vowels are farther apart only in CS, but not in IDS when compared to ADS. Finally, we will show that IDS vowels are significantly more breathy than ADS or CS vowels. Taken together, our results demonstrate that even though expansion of formant values occurs in spontaneous IDS, this expansion cannot be interpreted as an indication that the acoustic distances among vowels are farther apart, as is the case in CS. Instead, we found that IDS vowels are characterized by breathy voice, which has been associated with the communication of emotional affect.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.003}, Key = {fds326609} } @article{fds252835, Author = {Minai, U and Jincho, N and Yamane, N and Mazuka, R}, Title = {What hinders child semantic computation: children's universal quantification and the development of cognitive control.}, Journal = {Journal of Child Language}, Volume = {39}, Number = {5}, Pages = {919-956}, Year = {2012}, Month = {November}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22182242}, Abstract = {Recent studies on the acquisition of semantics have argued that knowledge of the universal quantifier is adult-like throughout development. However, there are domains where children still exhibit non-adult-like universal quantification, and arguments for the early mastery of relevant semantic knowledge do not explain what causes such non-adult-like interpretations. The present study investigates Japanese four- and five-year-old children's atypical universal quantification in light of the development of cognitive control. We hypothesized that children's still-developing cognitive control contributes to their atypical universal quantification. Using a combined eye-tracking and interpretation task together with a non-linguistic measure of cognitive control, we revealed a link between the achievement of adult-like universal quantification and the development of flexible perspective-switch. We argue that the development of cognitive control is one of the factors that contribute to children's processing of semantics.}, Doi = {10.1017/s0305000911000316}, Key = {fds252835} } @article{fds348909, Author = {Hitczenko, K and Mazuka, R and Elsner, M and Feldman, NH}, Title = {When context is and isn't helpful: A corpus study of naturalistic speech.}, Journal = {Psychonomic Bulletin & Review}, Volume = {27}, Number = {4}, Pages = {640-676}, Year = {2020}, Month = {August}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01687-6}, Abstract = {Infants learn about the sounds of their language and adults process the sounds they hear, even though sound categories often overlap in their acoustics. Researchers have suggested that listeners rely on context for these tasks, and have proposed two main ways that context could be helpful: top-down information accounts, which argue that listeners use context to predict which sound will be produced, and normalization accounts, which argue that listeners compensate for the fact that the same sound is produced differently in different contexts by factoring out this systematic context-dependent variability from the acoustics. These ideas have been somewhat conflated in past research, and have rarely been tested on naturalistic speech. We implement top-down and normalization accounts separately and evaluate their relative efficacy on spontaneous speech, using the test case of Japanese vowels. We find that top-down information strategies are effective even on spontaneous speech. Surprisingly, we find that at least one common implementation of normalization is ineffective on spontaneous speech, in contrast to what has been found on lab speech. We provide analyses showing that when there are systematic regularities in which contexts different sounds occur in-which are common in naturalistic speech, but generally controlled for in lab speech-normalization can actually increase category overlap rather than decrease it. This work calls into question the usefulness of normalization in naturalistic listening tasks, and highlights the importance of applying ideas from carefully controlled lab speech to naturalistic, spontaneous speech.}, Doi = {10.3758/s13423-019-01687-6}, Key = {fds348909} } @article{fds252813, Author = {Gervain, J and Sebastián-Gallés, N and Díaz, B and Laka, I and Mazuka, R and Yamane, N and Nespor, M and Mehler, J}, Title = {Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence.}, Journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, Volume = {4}, Pages = {689}, Year = {2013}, Month = {January}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24106483}, Abstract = {One universal feature of human languages is the division between grammatical functors and content words. From a learnability point of view, functors might provide entry points or anchors into the syntactic structure of utterances due to their high frequency. Despite its potentially universal scope, this hypothesis has not yet been tested on typologically different languages and on populations of different ages. Here we report a corpus study and an artificial grammar learning experiment testing the anchoring hypothesis in Basque, Japanese, French, and Italian adults. We show that adults are sensitive to the distribution of functors in their native language and use them when learning new linguistic material. However, compared to infants' performance on a similar task, adults exhibit a slightly different behavior, matching the frequency distributions of their native language more closely than infants do. This finding bears on the issue of the continuity of language learning mechanisms.}, Doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00689}, Key = {fds252813} } @article{fds252825, Author = {Choi, Y and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Young children's use of prosody in sentence parsing.}, Journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, Volume = {32}, Number = {2}, Pages = {197-217}, Year = {2003}, Month = {March}, ISSN = {0090-6905}, url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12690831}, Abstract = {Korean children's ability to use prosodic phrasing in sentence comprehension was studied using two types of ambiguity. First, we examined a word-segmentation ambiguity in which placement of the phrasal boundary leads to different interpretations of a sentence. Next, we examined a syntactic ambiguity in which the same words were differently grouped into syntactic phrases by prosodic demarcation. Children aged 3 or 4 years showed that they could use prosodic information to segment utterances and to derive the meaning of ambiguous sentences when the sentences only contained a word-segmentation ambiguity. However, even 5- to 6-year-old children were not able to reliably resolve the second type of ambiguity, an ambiguity of phrasal grouping, by using prosodic information. The results demonstrate that children's difficulties in dealing with structural ambiguity are not due to their inability to use prosodic information.}, Doi = {10.1023/a:1022400424874}, Key = {fds252825} } @article{fds252833, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {“Nyuji no onsei hattatsu” (In Japanese). (Development of infant speech perception)}, Journal = {The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan,}, Volume = {68}, Number = {5}, Pages = {241-247}, Year = {2012}, Key = {fds252833} } %% Books @book{fds38672, Author = {Mazuka, R. and Nagai N.}, Title = {Japanese Sentence Processing}, Publisher = {Lawrence Erlbaum}, Year = {1995}, Key = {fds38672} } @book{fds6112, Author = {Mazuka, R.}, Title = {The Development of Language Processing Strategies: A cross-linguistic study between Japanese and English}, Publisher = {Lawrence Erlbaum Associates}, Year = {1998}, Key = {fds6112} } %% Chapters in Books @misc{fds39783, Author = {Mazuka, R.}, Title = {Can a grammatical parameter be set before the first word? Prosodic contributions to early setting of a grammatical parameter}, Booktitle = {Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from Speech to Grammar in Early Acquisition}, Publisher = {Lawrence Erlbaum}, Editor = {J. Morgan, and K. Demuth}, Year = {1996}, Key = {fds39783} } @misc{fds39782, Author = {Mazuka, R. and Itoh, K. and Kondo, T.}, Title = {Cost of scrambling in Japanese sentence processing}, Booktitle = {Papers from International East Asian Psycholinguistics Workshop}, Publisher = {CSLI, Stanford, California}, Editor = {M. Nakayama}, Year = {2002}, Key = {fds39782} } %% Chapters in Books @misc{fds169347, Author = {Choi, Y.-O. and Mazuka, R.}, Title = {Acquisition of prosody in Korean}, Volume = {III}, Pages = {255-268}, Booktitle = {Handbook of Eastasian Psycholinguistics, Volume III, Korean}, Publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, Editor = {Lee, C.-M. and Simpson, G. and Kim, Y.J.}, Year = {2009}, ISBN = {978-0-521-83335-6}, Key = {fds169347} } @misc{fds169352, Author = {R. Mazuka}, Title = {Age of acquisition and critical period in language acquisition (In Japanese; Gengo kakutoku ni okeru nenrei kooka ha rinkaiki ka)}, Pages = {39-58}, Booktitle = {Brain Science and Communication (Gengo to shiko o umu no)}, Publisher = {University of Tokyo Press}, Editor = {A. Iriki}, Year = {2008}, Key = {fds169352} } @misc{fds53297, Author = {M. Nakayama and Y. Shirai and R. Mazuka}, Title = {Introduction}, Pages = {1-10}, Booktitle = {Handbook of East-Asian Psycholinguistics: Volume II, Japanese}, Publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, Editor = {M. Nakayama and R. Mazuka and Y. Shirai}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds53297} } @misc{fds252796, Author = {Mazuka, R and Kondo, T and Hayashi, A}, Title = {Japanese mothers' use of specialized vocabulary in infant-directed speech: Infant-directed vocabulary in Japanese}, Pages = {39-58}, Booktitle = {The Origins of Language: Unraveling Evolutionary Forces}, Publisher = {Springer Japan}, Editor = {N. Masataka}, Year = {2008}, Month = {January}, ISBN = {9784431791010}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-79102-7_4}, Abstract = {When adults talk to infants or young children, they modify their speech. The specialized speech is sometimes called motherese or infant-directed speech (IDS). Many characteristics of IDS have been documented across many languages, but the best known characteristics of IDS have to do with prosody of the speech, such as higher pitch and exaggerated pitch contours, and longer more frequent pauses (c.f., Fernald and Simon 1984; Fernald and Kuhl 1987; Fernald and Mazzie 1991; Snow and Ferguson 1977). Other types of modifi cations also occur, such as changes in syntactic properties, e.g., shorter and simpler utterances, and semantic contents, e.g., conversation about here and now (c.f., Newport et al. 1977). It has often been argued that many of the IDS properties are universal (Fernald 1993; Fisher and Tokura 1996; Grieser and Kuhl 1988; Kuhl and et al. 1997; Trainer and et al. 2000), but there are signifi cant cross-linguistic variations in the way mothers interact with their infants (e.g., Fernald and Morikawa 1993), and the way adults modify their speech in IDS (Fernald et al. 1989).}, Doi = {10.1007/978-4-431-79102-7_4}, Key = {fds252796} } @misc{fds359901, Author = {Mazuka, R}, Title = {Learning to become a native listener of Japanese}, Pages = {19-47}, Booktitle = {Handbook of Japanese Psycholinguistics}, Year = {2015}, Month = {January}, ISBN = {9781614511656}, Key = {fds359901} } @misc{fds365864, Author = {Gervain, J and Christophe, A and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Prosodic Bootstrapping}, Pages = {553-573}, Booktitle = {The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody}, Year = {2021}, Month = {January}, ISBN = {9780198832232}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198832232.013.36}, Abstract = {This chapter covers theoretical frameworks and experimental findings showing that young infants are already sensitive to language prosody prenatally and can use it to learn about the lexical and morphosyntactic features of their native language(s). Specifically, the chapter first summarizes how prosody relates to the lexicon and the grammar in different languages. It then reviews empirical evidence about prosodic perception in infants. Subsequently, it shows how this early sensitivity to prosody facilitates language learning. Three areas are discussed. First, evidence is presented showing that infants can use their knowledge of lexical stress to constrain word learning. Second, the chapter argues that infants use prosody to learn about basic word order. Third, the chapter shows that infants can use prosody to constrain syntactic analysis and thus word learning. The chapter concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the reviewed findings, and by highlighting open questions.}, Doi = {10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198832232.013.36}, Key = {fds365864} } @misc{fds53296, Author = {T. Kondo and R. Mazuka and K. Kakehi}, Title = {Role of lexical properties in Japanese sentence processing}, Pages = {226-232}, Booktitle = {Handbook of East-Asian Psycholinguistics: Volume II, Japanese}, Publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, Editor = {M. Nakayama and R. Mazuka and Y. Shirai}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds53296} } %% Papers Published @article{fds6114, Author = {Choi, Y. and Mazuka, R. and Akahane-Yamada, R.}, Title = {Korean and Japanese children’s production of English /l/ and /r/}, Booktitle = {Papers from the Workshop on Acquisition of East Asian Languages}, Publisher = {Kuroshio Publisher, Tokyo, Japan}, Editor = {Nakayama, M.}, Year = {2001}, Key = {fds6114} } %% Commentaries/Book Reviews @article{fds141551, Author = {Y. Sato, and R. Mazuka}, Title = {Relation between prenatal learning and post-natal language development: Comments on Morokuma, S., Fukushima, K., Nakano, H., and Wake, N. "Evaluating central nervous system fetus' behavior" (In Japanese)}, Journal = {Baby Science}, Number = {7}, Pages = {16-17}, Year = {2008}, Key = {fds141551} } %% Edited Volumes @misc{fds53295, Author = {M. Nakayama and R. Mazuka and Y. Shirai}, Title = {Handbook of East-Asian Psycholinguistics: Volume 2 Japanese}, Publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds53295} } @misc{fds201625, Author = {Arita, S. and Goto Butler and Y., Hauser and E., Horie and K., Mazuka and R., Shirai and Y. and Tsubakita, J}, Title = {Papers from the Tenth Annual Conference of th Japanese Society for Language Sciences: Studies in Language Sciences 10}, Publisher = {Kuroshio Publishers}, Address = {Tokyo, Japan}, Year = {2011}, Key = {fds201625} } %% Other @misc{fds53294, Author = {Y. Igarashi and R. Mazuka}, Title = {"Hahaoya tokuyuu no hanashikata (Motherese) wa otona no Nihongo to doochigau ka -- RIKEN Niongoboshikaiwa koopasu"(In Japanese: How do mothers speak differently to infants? -- RIKEN Mother-Infant Conversation Corpus --)}, Journal = {The Institute of Elecgtronics, Information and Communication Engeneers Technical Report}, Volume = {2006}, Pages = {31-35}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds53294} } @misc{fds201718, Author = {Arai, M. and Nakamura, C. and Mazuka R}, Title = {An anticipatory effect of syntactic priming in processing of structurally ambiguous sentences}, Journal = {2011 IEICE Technical Report}, Pages = {83-86}, Year = {2011}, Key = {fds201718} } @misc{fds169353, Author = {Kitahara, M. and Nishikawa, K. and Igarashi, Y. and Shinya, T. and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Charactiristics of pitch accents in infant-directed speech -An analysis of Riken Japanese Mother-Infant Conversation Corpus (In Japanese; Tai nyuuji hatsuwa ni okeru pitchi akusento no seishitsu ni tsuite; riken nihongo boshi kaiwa koopasu o tsukatta bunseki}, Journal = {The Institute of Elecgtronics, Information and Communication Engeneers Technical Report}, Volume = {NLC2008}, Number = {46}, Pages = {133-136}, Year = {2008}, Key = {fds169353} } @misc{fds169354, Author = {Tajima, K. and Tanaka, K. and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Does Japanese motherese help children acquire Japanese rhythm? -- Distributional analysis of moraic phonemes in infant-directed speech -- (In Japanese; hahaoya tokuyuu no hanashi kata wa nihongo rizumu no kakutoku ni yakudatsuka? --tainyuuji onsei ni okeru tokushuhaku onso no bunseki kara}, Journal = {The Institute of Elecgtronics, Information and Communication Engeneers Technical Report}, Volume = {SP2008}, Number = {37}, Pages = {99-104}, Year = {2008}, Key = {fds169354} } @misc{fds201619, Author = {Jincho, N. and Oishi, H. and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Effects of vision and language on attention during sentence comprehension-A Visual world study}, Journal = {IEICE Technical Report}, Volume = {TL2011-16}, Number = {2011-8}, Pages = {49-52}, Year = {2011}, Key = {fds201619} } @misc{fds141550, Author = {Y. Igarashi, and R. Mazuka}, Title = {Exaggerated Prosody in Infant-directed Speech?: Intonational Phonological Analysis of Japanese Infant-Directed Speech}, Journal = {Proceedings for Boston University Conference for Language Development}, Volume = {32}, Year = {2008}, Key = {fds141550} } @misc{fds185592, Author = {Hayashi, A. and Mazuka, A.}, Title = {Infants’ speech perception between 5- and 13-months}, Journal = {Proceedings of Technical Committee of Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, Acoustical Society of Japan}, Pages = {1-6}, Year = {2010}, Key = {fds185592} } @misc{fds169355, Author = {Kondo, T. and Jincho, N. and Mazuka, R. and Hayashi, A}, Title = {Influences of phonological length prosody in silent reading (In Japanese; Yomi no katei ni okeru onincho oyobi inritu no eikyo)}, Journal = {The Institute of Electronics, Information communication engineers (IEICE) Technical Report}, Volume = {TL2007}, Number = {8}, Pages = {41-46}, Year = {2007}, Key = {fds169355} } @misc{fds53240, Author = {R. Mazuka and Y. Igarashi and K. Nishikawa}, Title = {Input for learning Japanese: RIKEN Japanese Mother-infant Conversation Corpus}, Journal = {IEICE Technical Report}, Volume = {TL-2006-16}, Pages = {11-15}, Year = {2006}, Key = {fds53240} } @misc{fds185587, Author = {R. Mazuka}, Title = {Learning the melody of a language: Investigation into language acquisition through the prosody of Japanese}, Journal = {Proceedings of 2010 IEICE General Conference}, Pages = {SS35-38}, Year = {2010}, Key = {fds185587} } @misc{fds185589, Author = {Arai, M. and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Linking syntactic priming to language development: a visual world eye-tracking study}, Journal = {Technical Report of The institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers}, Volume = {110-163}, Number = {(TL2010-18)}, Pages = {43-48}, Year = {2010}, Key = {fds185589} } @misc{fds169348, Author = {R. Mazuka}, Title = {Role of linguistic rhythm for language acquisition. (In Japanese;Gengokakutoku no kiban wo nasu rhythm ninchi)}, Journal = {Gekkan Gengo (Japanese monthly magazin, "Language")}, Volume = {38}, Number = {6}, Pages = {58-65}, Publisher = {Taishukan Publishing Company (Tokyo)}, Year = {2009}, Key = {fds169348} } @misc{fds201617, Author = {Utsugi, A. and Koizumi, M. and Mazuka, R}, Title = {Subtle differences between the speech of young speakers of `Accentless'and Standard Japanese dialects: An analysis of pitch peak alignment}, Journal = {Proceedings for the 17th The 17th International Congress of Phonetic Science}, Pages = {2046-2049}, Year = {2011}, Key = {fds201617} } @misc{fds169350, Author = {Miyazawa, K. and Kikuchi, H. and Shinya, T. and Mazuka, R.}, Title = {The dynamic structure of vowels in infant-directed speech. –Riken Japanese Mother-Infant Conversation Corpus --(In Japanese; Tainyujihatsuwa no boin no jikan kozo, Riken Nihongo boshikaiwa kopasu o mochita bunseki.}, Journal = {The Institute of Electronics, Information and communication engineers (IEICE), Technical Report}, Volume = {SP2009}, Number = {73}, Pages = {67-72}, Year = {2009}, Key = {fds169350} } @misc{fds185588, Author = {Oishi, H. and Jincho, N. and Mazuka, R}, Title = {The involvement of inhibition function during garden-path recovery in sentence processing}, Journal = {Technical Report of The institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers}, Volume = {110-163}, Number = {(TL2010-18)}, Year = {2010}, Key = {fds185588} } | |
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