LAUSR

Significance Languages differ in the speech sounds they use, and humans need to learn which sounds their language uses. This learning starts early. By age 1, infants have already tuned into their language(s): their ability to hear sound distinctions from their language(s) improves, while they often lose the ability to hear other sound distinctions. Understanding how this early learning proceeds is important as it serves as a foundation for later development; however, it has proven difficult to identify a learning mechanism that works on the true input infants hear. We present an account for how infants learn the speech contrasts of their language and show that the necessary signal is present in naturalistic speech, advancing our understanding of early language learning.