Abstract
By relying on phoneme information, adults who are native speakers of Japanese can recognize Japanese words even if they are pronounced with an irregular accentual pattern. When and how do speakers of Japanese acquire this tolerance to irregularly accented words ? To address this question, recordings of correctly and incorrectly accented words were played to 3- and 4-year-old Japanese-speaking children, who were then asked to choose the picture that represented the meaning of each word. The 3-year-olds’ performance scores were worse when they heard incorrectly accented words, whereas the 4-year-olds’ performance did not differ between conditions. The children’s literacy in kana was unrelated to their performance. These data suggest that tolerance to irregularly accented words is acquired by the age of 4. The results are discussed in terms of abilities that may affect this tolerance.
