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This talk will focus on phonological development in the first two years of life. I will propose that phonological memory, or the ability to retain a novel word form well enough to repeat it, emerges out of vocal practice and early word production. Phonological memory is often tested through nonword repetition and found to predict lexical advance. However, Keren-Portnoy et al. (2010) demonstrated that phonological memory is itself predicted by the first advances in babbling. Pursuing this finding, I will trace the development of phonological memory – drawing on illustrative data from children learning several languages – from the earliest adult-like vocalizations through to the first word production and the subsequent consolidation of early words into an initial lexical network and more stable representational capacity.
Contrary to the common framing of phonological memory as a time-limited cognitive store (Baddeley et al., 1998; Gathercole, 2006), an embodiment model, based on experimental work with adults, has conceptualized it as the product of the dynamic sensorimotor processes that inform responses to speech (Macken et al., 2016, Jones & Macken, 2018). My developmental data accord with that alternative view, suggesting that the ongoing interaction of perceptual and production experience mediates the mapping of novel forms onto existing lexical or sublexical representations, drawing on what is familiar to assimilate what is new.
References
Baddeley, A. D., Gathercole, S. E., & Papagno, C. (1998). The phonological loop as a language learning device. Psychological Review, 105, 158–173.
Gathercole, S. E. (2006). Nonword repetition and word learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27.513-543.
Jones, D. M. & Macken, B. (2018). In the beginning was the deed. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 351-356.
Keren-Portnoy, T., Vihman, M. M., DePaolis, R., Whitaker, C. & Williams, N. A. (2010). The role of vocal practice in constructing phonological working memory. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 53, 1280-1293.
Macken, B., Taylor, J. C., Kozlov, M. D., Hughes, R. W. & Jones, D. (2016). Memory as embodiment. Cognition, 155, 113–124.
