Linguistic Experience and Phonemic Perception in Infancy: a Crosslinguistic Study

English- and Spanish-learning infants were tested for perception of 2 synthetic speech contrasts differing in voice onset time. The 2 pairs were chosen so that they were native to either Spanish or English. Using the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) paradigm, 6--8-month-old infants were taught to respond to a change in auditory stimuli with a headturn. Correct headturns were reinforced by the activation of a lighted animated toy. While Spanish-learning infants provided evidence of discriminating both English and Spanish contrasts, English-learning infants only provided evidence of discriminating their native contrast. The results are discussed in terms of the role of linguistic experience in the development of speech perception skills in infancy.