The study enrolled 10 adult American English speakers who listened to a series of recordings of
spoken nonsense syllables that began with sounds ranging between «s» to «shl» — a combination not found at the beginning of English words — and indicated by means of a button push whether they heard an initial «s» or «sh.»
An experimenter's synchronized taps on an elbow or knee enabled 4 - month - olds to notice
nonsense words embedded in
spoken strings of
syllables, say psycholinguist Amanda Seidl of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and...