Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Findings in infant speech perception suggest that early phonological perceptions m a y be syllabic in na- ture, and that there is a loss of sensitivity to nonnative contrasts toward the end of thefirst year of life. W e present a neural network model that simulates these two phenomena. In addition, the model and simula- tions (1) demonstrate h o w information about stress can be utilized in generating syllable-like percep- tions; (2) provide a simple means of extracting static representations firom a dynamic and co-articulated signal; and (3) indicate that the development of "at- tnictor" states may be necessary in network models of these phenomena.