Emphatic Stress 1 Running Head : EMPHATIC STRESS

In a series of studies, we examined how mothers naturally stress words across multiple mentions in speech to their infants and how this marking influences infants' recognition of words in fluent speech. We first collected samples of mothers' infant-directed speech using a technique that induced multiple repetitions of target words. Acoustic analyses revealed that mothers systematically alternated between emphatic and nonemphatic stress when talking to their infants. Using the headturn preference procedure, we then tested 7.5-month-old infants on their ability to detect familiarized bisyllabic words in fluent speech. Stress of target words (emphatic and nonemphatic) was systematically varied across familiarization and recognition phases of four experiments. Results indicated that, although infants generally prefer listening to words produced with emphatic stress, recognition was enhanced when the degree of emphatic stress at familiarization matched the degree of emphatic stress at recognition. Heather Bortfeld, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology College Station, TX 77843-4235 [email protected] June 5, 2007 Editor, Cognitive Psychology Gordan Logan, Ph.D. Vanderbilt University Dear Dr. Logan: In collaboration with my coauthor James Morgan, I am submitting the manuscript “Early word recognition may be stress-full” to be considered for publication in Cognitive Psychology. Art Markman would be an appropriate action editor for this manuscript. Suggested reviewers are: Nan Bernstein Ratner Cynthia Fisher Sandy Waxman Jenny Saffran Thierry Nazzi None of these individuals have been contacted about this paper, nor have they seen any version of the manuscript. Thank you in advance for considering our paper. Sincerely, Heather Bortfeld Cover Letter