Phonological Feature Abstraction Before 6 Months: Amodal Recognition of Place of Articulation Across Multiple Consonants

The classical view is that perceptual attunement to the native language, which emerges by 6–10 months, developmentally precedes phonological feature abstraction abilities. That assumption is challenged by findings from adults adopted into a new language environment at 3–5 months that imply they had already formed phonological feature abstractions about their birth language prior to 6 months. As phonological feature abstraction had not been directly tested in infants, we examined 4–6-month-olds’ amodal abstraction of the labial versus coronal place of articulation distinction between consonants. In the training phase, infants heard a series of labial non-words paired with an animal image and a series of coronal non-words (multisyllabic) paired with another image. At test, they viewed a silent video of a talker producing coronal and labial words, paired with either the familiarised image or the contrary image. The infants looked significantly longer on matching trials than mismatching trials, suggesting amodal abstraction of this consonantal place of articulation distinction by 4–6 months. These findings provide direct evidence for the inference from the adoptee findings that phonological feature abstraction emerges prior to perceptual attunement.