earticle

영어

The current study investigated the development of Korean infants’ ability to discriminate English sounds /r/ & /l/ using event-related potentials(ERP). The infants participated in an oddball task using English /ra/-/la/ contrast. For 5-7 month olds, the mean amplitudes of P150-250 responses to the deviant stimuli were significantly larger than those to the standard stimulus. By contrast, 12-15-month olds’ neural responses were not significantly different between the deviant and standard stimuli. These results provide additional evidence that infants' ability to perceive non-native sound contrasts declines toward the end of the first year of life. The current findings are discussed in terms of the developmental mechanisms responsible for processing native and nonnative speech sounds.