Word recognition in Italian infants: preliminary results

This is the preliminary study of a larger longitudinal analysis on speech perception in Italian infants. The study involved 30 (16 males and 14 females) monolingual Italian infants. For the purposes of the present study four series of 11 bisyllabic words were developed by means of databases for the Italian language: two lists were composed of familiar words and two lists were composed of rare words. Infants were tested at nine and eleven months of age with the head-turn procedure. The Italian version of CDI was also administered to all the families. Preliminary results indicated that infants showed significantly longer head-turns with familiar words F-(1,F- 15) = 7.42; p = 0.05. Results revealed the ability of Italian children to distinguish familiar from rare words at 11 months of age.