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Infants begin life with the remarkable ability to distinguish between the phonetic sounds of all human languages, effectively acting as 'universal listeners.' This broad perceptual capacity narrows within their first year. By approximately 12 months of age, their auditory perception becomes specialized, and they primarily discriminate only among the phonemes present in the language or languages they are regularly exposed to in their environment.

Infant Phoneme Discrimination and Perceptual Narrowing

A developmental psychology lab is conducting an experiment. They present two infants from monolingual English-speaking homes with a pair of distinct sounds from the Hindi language that do not exist in English. Infant A is 6 months old, and Infant B is 11 months old. Based on your understanding of early auditory development, which infant is more likely to successfully distinguish between the two Hindi sounds? Explain the specific developmental process that accounts for this difference.

Infant Language Perception Study

A researcher is studying an infant who is being raised in a home where only Japanese is spoken. The researcher tests the infant's ability to tell the difference between the English sounds 'ra' and 'la' at two different times: once at 6 months of age and again at 11 months of age. Which of the following outcomes is most likely?

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