An infant exposed to a language with highly variable syllable durations experiences reduced word segmentation accuracy. Which mechanism primarily explains this outcome?

💡 Explanation

Diminished statistical learning efficiency occurs because variable syllable durations reduce the reliability of transitional probabilities between syllables, therefore hindering the infant's ability to identify word boundaries. This contrasts with enhanced phoneme boundary sensitivity, which would improve segmentation, rather than degrade it, under such conditions.

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