23、 日本人對於/r/與/l/的發音經常難以區辨，下列那一個狀況說明了他們對於這兩個音素（phoneme）的區辨與學習？
(A) 幼兒出生後幾個月還可以區辨/r/, /l/，但後來喪失區辨能力
(B) 幼兒在出生後因為基因的因素而無法區辨/r/, /l/
(C) 幼兒出生後開始學習/r/, /l/的區辨，但無法區辨得好
(D) 不論幼兒或成人都能區辨/r/, /l/，只是容易受到字的脈絡所影響

☛這題出處：
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Fredrickson, B., & Loftus, G. R. (2009).

Atkinson and Hilgard's introduction to psychology 15E.

Andover: Cengage Learning. Ch9  LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT, p326.

中文出處：
心理學導論(二版,翻譯自原文16版)
第9章 語言和思考,  p299(音素及其組合)。
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☛內文：

These remarkable facts were determined through experiments

in which infants who were sucking on pacifiers were presented

with pairs of sounds in succession. Because infants suck more in

response to a novel stimulus than in response to a familiar

one, their rate of sucking can be used to tell whether they

perceive two successive sounds as the same or different.

Six-month-old infants increase their rate of sucking when

the successive sounds correspond to different phonemes

in any language, but 1-year-olds increase their rate of

sucking only when the successive sounds correspond to

different phonemes in their own language. Thus, a six-

month-old Japanese child can distinguish /l/ from /r/ but

loses this ability by the end of the first year of life (Eimas,

1985). 

☛上述的實驗佐證以下的結論：

What changes over the first year of life is that

infants learn which phonemes are relevant to their language

and lose their ability to discriminate between

sounds that correspond to the same phoneme in their

language. (In essence, they lose the ability to make distinctions

that will be of no use to them in understanding and producing their language.)

簡單來說原本會，但後來用不到就廢了～

(ps 日語沒有英文的捲舌音 所以他們的/r/發出來像/l/)。

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☛該題考的概念也出在11題的B選項 ，

6個月大的嬰兒是可以區分英文的 /l/ 與 /r/。