The development of rhythmic preferences by Dutch-learning infants

In this chapter the early acquisition of word stress is discussed. This study is aimed at examining rhythmic preferences for either strong-weak or weak-strong stress patterns of Dutch-learning infants between 4 and 8 months of age. It is complementary to previous rhythmic preference studies investigating infants learning similar stress-timed, trochaic (Germanic) languages, such as English and German. Instead of using the traditional head-turn preference procedure, an innovative central fixation auditory preference procedure using eye tracking is employed to test the development of rhythmic preferences. The research questions are: Do Dutch-learning infants show a language-specific rhythmic preference? And if so, at what age does this preference appear? The hypotheses are that Dutch-learning infants fail to show a preference at 4 months of age, but that they have developed a language-specific rhythmic preference at 6 months of age, based on a distributional analysis of the input they receive in their native language. In total, 102 Dutch-learning infants aged 4, 6, and 8 months have been tested and the results show that the infants present a language-specific rhythmic preference for the strong-weak stress pattern at all ages, which, however, is strongest at 6 months of age. These results converge with results found in previous studies investigating English- and German-learning infants within the same age range with different types of stimuli and with different methods. However, as Dutch is another stress-timed, trochaic (Germanic) language, these results cannot be generalized to languages with a different rhythm or word stress pattern and future research should investigate infants learning other types of languages.