How do infants segment and recognize familiar sound patterns in continuous speech after brief exposure, and can they distinguish these patterns from unfamiliar sound combinations?

In this experiment, we’re attempting to learn how infants segment parts of words from running, continuous speech, because most of the words they hear are not in isolation, but in larger sentences. Specifically, we are looking to see if a familiar sound pattern can be recognized by infants after briefly being exposed to new sound combinations. To test this we have infants sit on the parent’s lap in a booth with three lights, one in front and one on each side. We have them listen for a few minutes to an audio loop featuring the target sound patterns. After the loop, we play the two patterns in isolation as well as two brand new patterns to see which ones infants listen to/pay attention to longer.