Precursor skills for learning morphology in 12-month-old children (Habilidades precursoras para el aprendizaje de la morfología en infantes de 12 meses de edad)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate sub-lexical segmentation in Spanish-speaking children based on the perception of regular syllables (pseudomorphemes), as well as their association with a visual referent. Both of these skills are the precursors to learning morphology for language acquisition. Twenty-three 12-month-old children participated; they were evaluated with three experimental tasks which tested their skill at segmenting pseudomorphemes from a set of pseudowords when they did and did not appear in the final position, as well as the association between them and a visual referent. The results showed that the children were able to segment the pseudomorphemes at the end of the pseudowords and tended to associate them with a visual referent. We also found that when the morpheme did not necessarily appear in the final position, the children who preferred that position looked at the referent for a longer time. These results reveal the skills that the children are developing on their way to learning morphology.