Parents are often a good source of information, introducing children to how the world around them is described and explained in terms of cause-and-effect relations. Parents also vary in their speech, and these variations can predict children's later language skills. Being born preterm might be related to such parent-child interactions. The present…

Examines the importance of canonical syllables in early speech perception as well as production. A study, using the discrimination learning method, tested 20 infants (mean age 51 hours) and 20 controls for their ability to discriminate between members of syllable pairs that were either canonical or noncanonical. Differences in reactions are…