Tamar Keren‐portnoy
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1464161 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Tamar Keren‐portnoy |
| NOMBRES | Tamar |
| APELLIDO | Keren‐portnoy |
| FIRMA | PORTNOY T K |
| AFILIACIONES | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7258-2404 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 21 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 4 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 21 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2006 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
How Templatic Is Arabic Input to Children? The Role of Child-Directed-Speech in the Acquisition of Semitic Morpho-Phonology
Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic are known for having a non-concatenative morphology: words are typically built of a combination of a consonantal root, typically tri-consonantal (e.g., k-t-b “related to writing” in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)), with a prosodic template. Research on Hebrew language development suggests early sensitivity to frequently occurring templates. For the Arabic dialects, little is known about whether implicit s…
Size sound symbolism in mothers’ speech to their infants
Six-month-olds infer object size based on pitch: they map high-pitched vowels onto smaller objects and low-pitched vowels onto larger objects (Peña et al., 2011). The ‘sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis’ (Imai & Kita, 2014) proposes that this may support understanding of word-meaning correspondences; by drawing on iconic pairings between linguistic cues and corresponding referents (e.g., higher pitch for smaller objects), infants develop un…
Exploring Developmental Connections
Current research indicates likely developmental connections between the evolution of sleep patterns, motor skills progression, and the expansion of vocabulary. These connections are grounded in the well‐established role of sleep in memory and learning, as well as in the cascading effects on language development of the acquisition of new motor skills. However, no study has so far undertaken a comprehensive and systematic examination of these conne…
A Challenge to Whole-word Phonology? A Study of Japanese and Mandarin
Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually salient elements or those that align with their own vocal patterns. Here we ask whether the predicti…
Infant-directed speech does not always involve exaggerated vowel distinctions
This study compared the acoustic properties of 26 (100% female, 100% monolingual) Danish caregivers' spontaneous speech addressed to their 11- to 24-month-old infants (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult experimenter (adult-directed speech, ADS). The data were collected between 2016 and 2018 in Aarhus, Denmark. Prosodic properties of Danish IDS conformed to cross-linguistic patterns, with a higher pitch, greater pitch variability, and slowe…
Child phonological responses to variegation in adult words
Variegation – the presence of more than one supraglottal consonant per word – is a key challenge for children as they increase their expressive vocabulary toward the end of the single-word period. Here we consider the prosodic structures of target words and child forms in English, Finnish, French, Japanese and Mandarin to determine whether children learning these languages respond similarly to the challenge or instead differ in ways related to th…
Systematic Review of the Effects of Sleep on Memory and Word Learning in Infancy
This systematic review surveyed research on the associations between sleep and the memory processes involved in word learning in infancy. We found only 16 studies that addressed this topic directly, identifying associations between infant sleep and the memory processes, the identification of word forms in running speech, and the stabilization and generalization of new word form–meaning associations. Some studies investigated changes in brain resp…
A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis of the acoustic features of infant-directed speech
A Bayesian meta‐analysis of infants’ ability to perceive audio–visual congruence for speech
This paper quantifies the extent to which infants can perceive audio–visual congruence for speech information and assesses whether this ability changes with native language exposure over time. A hierarchical Bayesian robust regression model of 92 separate effect sizes extracted from 24 studies indicates a moderate effect size in a positive direction (0.35, CI [0.21: 0.50]). This result suggests that infants possess a robust ability to detect audi…
Did I just do that?”—Six‐month‐olds learn the contingency between their vocalizations and a visual reward in 5 minutes
It has been shown that infants can increase or modify a motorically available behavior such as sucking, kicking, arm waving, etc., in response to a positive visual reinforcement (e.g., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Millar, 1990; Rochat & Striano, 1999; Rovee‐Collier, 1997; Watson & Ramey, 1972). We tested infants to determine if they would also change their vocal behavior in response to contingent feedback, which lacks the social, emotional, and audito…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
Robust effects of stress on early lexical representation
This study aims to elucidate the factors that affect the robustness of word form representations by exploring the relative influence of lexical stress and segmental identity (consonant vs. vowel) on infant word recognition. Our main question was which changes to the words may go unnoticed and which may lead the words to be unrecognizable. One‐hundred 11‐month‐old Hebrew‐learning infants were tested in two experiments using the Central Fixation Pr…
An order effect in English infants' discrimination of an Urdu affricate contrast
How salient are onomatopoeia in the early input? A prosodic analysis of infant-directed speech
Onomatopoeia are frequently identified amongst infants’ earliest words (Menn & Vihman, 2011), yet few authors have considered why this might be, and even fewer have explored this phenomenon empirically. Here we analyze mothers’ production of onomatopoeia in infant-directed speech (IDS) to provide an input-based perspective on these forms. Twelve mothers were recorded interacting with their 8-month-olds; onomatopoeic words (e.g. quack ) were compa…
Infant Recognition of Hebrew Vocalic Word Patterns
The ability of infants to recognize phonotactic patterns in their native language is widely acknowledged. However, the specific ability of infants to recognize patterns created by nonadjacent vowels in words has seldom been investigated. In Semitic languages such as Hebrew, groups of multisyllabic words are identical in their nonadjacent vowel sequences and stress position but differ in the consonants interposed between the vowels. The goals of t…
When do infants begin recognizing familiar words in sentences
Previous studies have shown that by 11 but not by 10 months infants recognize words that have become familiar from everyday life independently of the experimental setting. This study explored the ability of 10-, 11-, and 12-month-old infants to recognize familiar words in sentential context, without experimental training. The headturn preference procedure was used to contrast passages containing words likely to be familiar to the infants with pas…
The Role of Production in Infant Word Learning
Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1)Articulatory filter: The hypothesis that children are influenced in noticing words in input speech by their resemblance to patterns they c…
The dynamics of syntax acquisition
This paper sets out to show how facilitation between different clause structures operates over time in syntax acquisition. The phenomenon of facilitation within given structures has been widely documented, yet inter-structure facilitation has rarely been reported so far. Our findings are based on the naturalistic production corpora of six toddlers learning Hebrew as their first language. We use regression analysis, a method that has not been used…
The role of production practice in lexical and phonological development – a commentary on Stoel-Gammon's ‘Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children’
Carol Stoel-Gammon has made a real contribution in bringing together two fields that are not generally jointly addressed. Like Stoel-Gammon, we have long focused on individual differences in phonological development (e.g. Vihman, Ferguson & Elbert, 1986; Vihman, Boysson-Bardies, Durand & Sundberg, 1994; Keren-Portnoy, Majorano & Vihman, 2008). And like her, we have been closely concerned with the relationship between lexical and phonological lear…
From phonetics to phonology
This study assesses the extent of phonetic continuity between babble and words in four Italian children followed longitudinally from 0 ; 9 or 0 ; 10 to 2 ; 0 – two with relatively rapid and two with slower lexical growth. Prelinguistic phonetic characteristics, including both (a) consistent use of specific consonants and (b) age of onset and extent of consonant variegation in babble, are found to predict rate of lexical advance and to relate to t…
Facilitation and practice in verb acquisition
This paper presents a model of syntax acquisition, whose main points are as follows: Syntax is acquired in an item-based manner; early learning facilitates subsequent learning – as evidenced by the accelerating rate of new verbs entering a given structure; and mastery of syntactic knowledge is typically achieved through practice – as evidenced by intensive use and common word order errors – and this slows down learning during the early stages of …
An order effect in English infants' discrimination of an Urdu affricate contrast
The Role of Production in Infant Word Learning
Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1)Articulatory filter: The hypothesis that children are influenced in noticing words in input speech by their resemblance to patterns they c…
Facilitation and practice in verb acquisition
This paper presents a model of syntax acquisition, whose main points are as follows: Syntax is acquired in an item-based manner; early learning facilitates subsequent learning – as evidenced by the accelerating rate of new verbs entering a given structure; and mastery of syntactic knowledge is typically achieved through practice – as evidenced by intensive use and common word order errors – and this slows down learning during the early stages of …
From phonetics to phonology
This study assesses the extent of phonetic continuity between babble and words in four Italian children followed longitudinally from 0 ; 9 or 0 ; 10 to 2 ; 0 – two with relatively rapid and two with slower lexical growth. Prelinguistic phonetic characteristics, including both (a) consistent use of specific consonants and (b) age of onset and extent of consonant variegation in babble, are found to predict rate of lexical advance and to relate to t…
The dynamics of syntax acquisition
This paper sets out to show how facilitation between different clause structures operates over time in syntax acquisition. The phenomenon of facilitation within given structures has been widely documented, yet inter-structure facilitation has rarely been reported so far. Our findings are based on the naturalistic production corpora of six toddlers learning Hebrew as their first language. We use regression analysis, a method that has not been used…
The role of production practice in lexical and phonological development – a commentary on Stoel-Gammon's ‘Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children’
Carol Stoel-Gammon has made a real contribution in bringing together two fields that are not generally jointly addressed. Like Stoel-Gammon, we have long focused on individual differences in phonological development (e.g. Vihman, Ferguson & Elbert, 1986; Vihman, Boysson-Bardies, Durand & Sundberg, 1994; Keren-Portnoy, Majorano & Vihman, 2008). And like her, we have been closely concerned with the relationship between lexical and phonological lear…
When do infants begin recognizing familiar words in sentences
Previous studies have shown that by 11 but not by 10 months infants recognize words that have become familiar from everyday life independently of the experimental setting. This study explored the ability of 10-, 11-, and 12-month-old infants to recognize familiar words in sentential context, without experimental training. The headturn preference procedure was used to contrast passages containing words likely to be familiar to the infants with pas…
The Role of Production in Infant Word Learning
Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1)Articulatory filter: The hypothesis that children are influenced in noticing words in input speech by their resemblance to patterns they c…
Infant Recognition of Hebrew Vocalic Word Patterns
The ability of infants to recognize phonotactic patterns in their native language is widely acknowledged. However, the specific ability of infants to recognize patterns created by nonadjacent vowels in words has seldom been investigated. In Semitic languages such as Hebrew, groups of multisyllabic words are identical in their nonadjacent vowel sequences and stress position but differ in the consonants interposed between the vowels. The goals of t…
How salient are onomatopoeia in the early input? A prosodic analysis of infant-directed speech
Onomatopoeia are frequently identified amongst infants’ earliest words (Menn & Vihman, 2011), yet few authors have considered why this might be, and even fewer have explored this phenomenon empirically. Here we analyze mothers’ production of onomatopoeia in infant-directed speech (IDS) to provide an input-based perspective on these forms. Twelve mothers were recorded interacting with their 8-month-olds; onomatopoeic words (e.g. quack ) were compa…
An order effect in English infants' discrimination of an Urdu affricate contrast
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
Robust effects of stress on early lexical representation
This study aims to elucidate the factors that affect the robustness of word form representations by exploring the relative influence of lexical stress and segmental identity (consonant vs. vowel) on infant word recognition. Our main question was which changes to the words may go unnoticed and which may lead the words to be unrecognizable. One‐hundred 11‐month‐old Hebrew‐learning infants were tested in two experiments using the Central Fixation Pr…
Did I just do that?”—Six‐month‐olds learn the contingency between their vocalizations and a visual reward in 5 minutes
It has been shown that infants can increase or modify a motorically available behavior such as sucking, kicking, arm waving, etc., in response to a positive visual reinforcement (e.g., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Millar, 1990; Rochat & Striano, 1999; Rovee‐Collier, 1997; Watson & Ramey, 1972). We tested infants to determine if they would also change their vocal behavior in response to contingent feedback, which lacks the social, emotional, and audito…
A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis of the acoustic features of infant-directed speech
A Bayesian meta‐analysis of infants’ ability to perceive audio–visual congruence for speech
This paper quantifies the extent to which infants can perceive audio–visual congruence for speech information and assesses whether this ability changes with native language exposure over time. A hierarchical Bayesian robust regression model of 92 separate effect sizes extracted from 24 studies indicates a moderate effect size in a positive direction (0.35, CI [0.21: 0.50]). This result suggests that infants possess a robust ability to detect audi…
A Challenge to Whole-word Phonology? A Study of Japanese and Mandarin
Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually salient elements or those that align with their own vocal patterns. Here we ask whether the predicti…
Infant-directed speech does not always involve exaggerated vowel distinctions
This study compared the acoustic properties of 26 (100% female, 100% monolingual) Danish caregivers' spontaneous speech addressed to their 11- to 24-month-old infants (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult experimenter (adult-directed speech, ADS). The data were collected between 2016 and 2018 in Aarhus, Denmark. Prosodic properties of Danish IDS conformed to cross-linguistic patterns, with a higher pitch, greater pitch variability, and slowe…
Child phonological responses to variegation in adult words
Variegation – the presence of more than one supraglottal consonant per word – is a key challenge for children as they increase their expressive vocabulary toward the end of the single-word period. Here we consider the prosodic structures of target words and child forms in English, Finnish, French, Japanese and Mandarin to determine whether children learning these languages respond similarly to the challenge or instead differ in ways related to th…
Systematic Review of the Effects of Sleep on Memory and Word Learning in Infancy
This systematic review surveyed research on the associations between sleep and the memory processes involved in word learning in infancy. We found only 16 studies that addressed this topic directly, identifying associations between infant sleep and the memory processes, the identification of word forms in running speech, and the stabilization and generalization of new word form–meaning associations. Some studies investigated changes in brain resp…
Size sound symbolism in mothers’ speech to their infants
Six-month-olds infer object size based on pitch: they map high-pitched vowels onto smaller objects and low-pitched vowels onto larger objects (Peña et al., 2011). The ‘sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis’ (Imai & Kita, 2014) proposes that this may support understanding of word-meaning correspondences; by drawing on iconic pairings between linguistic cues and corresponding referents (e.g., higher pitch for smaller objects), infants develop un…
Exploring Developmental Connections
Current research indicates likely developmental connections between the evolution of sleep patterns, motor skills progression, and the expansion of vocabulary. These connections are grounded in the well‐established role of sleep in memory and learning, as well as in the cascading effects on language development of the acquisition of new motor skills. However, no study has so far undertaken a comprehensive and systematic examination of these conne…
How Templatic Is Arabic Input to Children? The Role of Child-Directed-Speech in the Acquisition of Semitic Morpho-Phonology
Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic are known for having a non-concatenative morphology: words are typically built of a combination of a consonantal root, typically tri-consonantal (e.g., k-t-b “related to writing” in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)), with a prosodic template. Research on Hebrew language development suggests early sensitivity to frequently occurring templates. For the Arabic dialects, little is known about whether implicit s…
Psychology (19 obras) · Language Development and Disorders (17 obras) · Linguistics (16 obras) · Cognitive psychology (11 obras) · Reading and Literacy Development (11 obras) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (10 obras) · Phonology (8 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (7 obras) · Computer Science (7 obras) · Developmental psychology (7 obras)