Better Processing of Consonantal Over Vocalic Information in Word Learning at 16 Months of Age

Previous research using the name-based categorization task has shown that 20-month-old infants can simultaneously learn 2 words that only differ by 1 consonantal feature but fail to do so when the words only differ by 1 vocalic feature. This asymmetry was taken as evidence for the proposal that consonants are more important than vowels at the lexical level. This study explores this consonant-vowel asymmetry in 16-month-old infants, using an interactive word learning task. It shows that the pattern of the 16-month-olds is the same as that of the 20-month-olds. Infants succeeded with 1-feature consonantal contrasts (either place or voicing) but were at chance level with 1-feature vocalic contrasts (either place or height). These results thus contribute to a growing body of evidence establishing, from early infancy to adulthood, that consonants and vowels have different roles in lexical acquisition and processing.