Infants Long-Term Memory for the Sound Patterns of Words and Voices.

Infantsʹ long-term memory for the phonological patterns of words versus the indexical properties of talkersʹ voices was examined in 3 experiments using the Headturn Preference Procedure (D. G. Kemler Nelson et al., 1995). Infants were familiarized with repetitions of 2 words and tested on the next day for their orientation times to 4 passages-2 of which included the familiarized words. At 7.5 months of age, infants oriented longer to passages containing familiarized words when these were produced by the original talker. t A7.5 and 10.5 months of age, infants did not recognize words in passages produced by a novel female talker. In contrast, 7.5-month-olds demonstrated word recognition in both talker conditions when presented with passages produced by both the original and the novel talker. The findings suggest that talker-specific information can prime infantsʹ memory for words and facilitate word recognition across talkers