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Katus L, Crespo-Llado MM, Milosavljevic B, Saidykhan M, Njie O, Fadera T, McCann S, Acolatse L, Perapoch Amadó M, Rozhko M, Moore SE, Elwell CE, Lloyd-Fox S. It takes a village: Caregiver diversity and language contingency in the UK and rural Gambia. Infant Behav Dev 2024; 74:101913. [PMID: 38056188 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101913] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2023] [Revised: 09/28/2023] [Accepted: 11/26/2023] [Indexed: 12/08/2023]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION There is substantial diversity within and between contexts globally in caregiving practices and family composition, which may have implications for the early interaction's infants engage in. We draw on data from the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT, www.globalfnirs.org/the-bright-project) project, which longitudinally examined infants in the UK and in rural Gambia, West Africa. In The Gambia, households are commonly characterized by multigenerational, frequently polygamous family structures, which, in part, is reflected in the diversity of caregivers a child spends time with. In this paper, we aim to 1) evaluate and validate the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) for use in the Mandinka speaking families in The Gambia, 2) examine the nature (i.e., prevalence of turn taking) and amount (i.e., adult and child vocalizations) of conversation that infants are exposed to from 12 to 24 months of age and 3) investigate the link between caregiver diversity and child language outcomes, examining the mediating role of contingent turn taking. METHOD We obtained naturalistic seven-hour-long LENA recordings at 12, 18 and 24 months of age from a cohort of N = 204 infants from Mandinka speaking households in The Gambia and N = 61 infants in the UK. We examined developmental changes and site differences in LENA counts of adult word counts (AWC), contingent turn taking (CTT) and child vocalizations (CVC). In the larger and more heterogenous Gambian sample, we also investigated caregiver predictors of turn taking frequency. We hereby examined the number of caregivers present over the recording day and the consistency of caregivers across two subsequent days per age point. We controlled for children's cognitive development via the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). RESULTS Our LENA validation showed high internal consistency between the human coders and automated LENA outputs (Cronbach's alpha's all >.8). All LENA counts were higher in the UK compared to the Gambian cohort. In The Gambia, controlling for overall neurodevelopment via the MSEL, CTT at 12 and 18 months predicted CVC at 18 and 24 months. Caregiver consistency was associated with CTT counts at 18 and 24 months. The number of caregivers and CTT counts showed an inverted u-shape relationship at 18 and 24 months, with an intermediate number of caregivers being associated with the highest CTT frequencies. Mediation analyses showed a partial mediation by number of caregivers and CTT and 24-month CVC. DISCUSSION The LENA provided reliable estimates for the Mandinka language in the home recording context. We showed that turn taking is associated with subsequent child vocalizations and explored contextual caregiving factors contributing to turn taking in the Gambian cohort.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Katus
- Institute for Lifecourse Development, School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, UK; Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, UK.
| | | | - Bosiljka Milosavljevic
- Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, Queen Mary University of London, UK
| | - Mariama Saidykhan
- Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Omar Njie
- Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Tijan Fadera
- Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Samantha McCann
- Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK; Department of Women and Children's Health, Kings College London, UK
| | - Lena Acolatse
- Nutrition Innovation Centre for Food and Health (NICHE), School of Biomedical Sciences, Ulster University, UK
| | | | - Maria Rozhko
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK
| | - Sophie E Moore
- Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK; Department of Women and Children's Health, Kings College London, UK
| | - Clare E Elwell
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, UK
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Regev TI, Lipkin B, Boebinger D, Paunov A, Kean H, Norman-Haignere S, Fedorenko E. Preserved functional organization of human auditory cortex in individuals missing one temporal lobe from infancy. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.01.18.523979. [PMID: 36711687 PMCID: PMC9882328 DOI: 10.1101/2023.01.18.523979] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/21/2023]
Abstract
Human cortical responses to natural sounds, measured with fMRI, can be approximated as the weighted sum of a small number of canonical response patterns (components), each having interpretable functional and anatomical properties. Here, we asked whether this organization is preserved in cases where only one temporal lobe is available due to early brain damage by investigating a unique family: one sibling born without a left temporal lobe, another without a right temporal lobe, and a third anatomically neurotypical. We analyzed fMRI responses to diverse natural sounds within the intact hemispheres of these individuals and compared them to 12 neurotypical participants. All siblings manifested the neurotypical auditory responses in their intact hemispheres. These results suggest that the development of the auditory cortex in each hemisphere does not depend on the existence of the other hemisphere, highlighting the redundancy and equipotentiality of the bilateral auditory system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tamar I Regev
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
| | - Benjamin Lipkin
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
| | - Dana Boebinger
- Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY
| | - Alexander Paunov
- INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit (UNICOG), NeuroSpin Center, Gif sur Yvette, France
| | - Hope Kean
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
| | - Sam Norman-Haignere
- Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
| | - Evelina Fedorenko
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA
- Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT) Program, Harvard University, Boston MA
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Belteki Z, van den Boomen C, Junge C. Face-to-face contact during infancy: How the development of gaze to faces feeds into infants' vocabulary outcomes. Front Psychol 2022; 13:997186. [PMID: 36389540 PMCID: PMC9650530 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.997186] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/18/2022] [Accepted: 10/03/2022] [Indexed: 08/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Infants acquire their first words through interactions with social partners. In the first year of life, infants receive a high frequency of visual and auditory input from faces, making faces a potential strong social cue in facilitating word-to-world mappings. In this position paper, we review how and when infant gaze to faces is likely to support their subsequent vocabulary outcomes. We assess the relevance of infant gaze to faces selectively, in three domains: infant gaze to different features within a face (that is, eyes and mouth); then to faces (compared to objects); and finally to more socially relevant types of faces. We argue that infant gaze to faces could scaffold vocabulary construction, but its relevance may be impacted by the developmental level of the infant and the type of task with which they are presented. Gaze to faces proves relevant to vocabulary, as gazes to eyes could inform about the communicative nature of the situation or about the labeled object, while gazes to the mouth could improve word processing, all of which are key cues to highlighting word-to-world pairings. We also discover gaps in the literature regarding how infants' gazes to faces (versus objects) or to different types of faces relate to vocabulary outcomes. An important direction for future research will be to fill these gaps to better understand the social factors that influence infant vocabulary outcomes.
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Weyers I, Männel C, Mueller JL. Constraints on infants' ability to extract non-adjacent dependencies from vowels and consonants. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2022; 57:101149. [PMID: 36084447 PMCID: PMC9465114 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2022.101149] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2022] [Revised: 08/29/2022] [Accepted: 08/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
Language acquisition requires infants' ability to track dependencies between distant speech elements. Infants as young as 3 months have been shown to successfully identify such non-adjacent dependencies between syllables, and this ability has been related to the maturity of infants' pitch processing. The present study tested whether 8- to 10-month-old infants (N = 68) can also learn dependencies at smaller segmental levels and whether the relation between dependency and pitch processing extends to other auditory features. Infants heard either syllable sequences encoding an item-specific dependency between non-adjacent vowels or between consonants. These frequent standard sequences were interspersed with infrequent intensity deviants and dependency deviants, which violated the non-adjacent relationship. Both vowel and consonant groups showed electrophysiological evidence for detection of the intensity manipulation. However, evidence for dependency learning was only found for infants hearing the dependencies across vowels, not consonants, and only in a subgroup of infants who had an above-average language score in a behavioral test. In a correlation analysis, we found no relation between intensity and dependency processing. We conclude that item-specific, segment-based non-adjacent dependencies are not easily learned by infants and if so, vowels are more accessible to the task, but only to infants who display advanced language skills.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ivonne Weyers
- Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Vienna, Austria; Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany.
| | - Claudia Männel
- Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353 Berlin, Germany; Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1A, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Jutta L Mueller
- Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Vienna, Austria; Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany
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Uhler KM, Anderson SR, Yoshinaga-Itano C, Walker KA, Hunter S. Speech Discrimination in Infancy Predicts Language Outcomes at 30 Months for Both Children with Normal Hearing and Those with Hearing Differences. J Clin Med 2022; 11:5821. [PMID: 36233686 PMCID: PMC9572664 DOI: 10.3390/jcm11195821] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2022] [Revised: 09/21/2022] [Accepted: 09/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Speech discrimination assessments are used to validate amplification fittings of older children who are hard of hearing (CHH). Unfortunately, speech discrimination is not assessed clinically ≤24 months and in turn no studies have investigated the relationship between speech discrimination during infancy and later language development among CHH. OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between an individual infant's speech discrimination measured at 9 months and their expressive/receptive spoken language at 30 months for children with normal hearing (CNH) and CHH. METHODS Behavioral speech discrimination was assessed at 9 months and language assessments were conducted at 16, 24, and 30 months using a parent questionnaire, and at 30 months using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning among 90 infants (49 CNH; 41 CHH). RESULTS Conditioned Head Turn (CHT) performance for /a-i/ significantly predicted expressive and receptive language at 30 months across both groups. Parental questionnaires were also predictive of later language ability. No significant differences in speech discrimination or language outcomes between CNH and CHH were found. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study to document a positive relationship between infant speech discrimination and later language abilities in both early-identified CHH and CNH.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristin M. Uhler
- Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Children’s Hospital Colorado, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
| | - Sean R. Anderson
- Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
| | | | - Kerry A. Walker
- Department of Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
| | - Sharon Hunter
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
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Tsui RKY, Gonzalez-Barrero AM, Schott E, Byers-Heinlein K. Are translation equivalents special? Evidence from simulations and empirical data from bilingual infants. Cognition 2022; 225:105084. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105084] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2021] [Revised: 02/21/2022] [Accepted: 02/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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Marimon M, Höhle B. Testing prosodic development with the Headturn Preference Procedure: A test‐retest reliability study. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2362] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mireia Marimon
- Cognitive Sciences, Linguistics Department University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany
| | - Barbara Höhle
- Cognitive Sciences, Linguistics Department University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany
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Franco F, Suttora C, Spinelli M, Kozar I, Fasolo M. Singing to infants matters: Early singing interactions affect musical preferences and facilitate vocabulary building. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2022; 49:552-577. [PMID: 33908341 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000921000167] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
This research revealed that the frequency of reported parent-infant singing interactions predicted 6-month-old infants' performance in laboratory music experiments and mediated their language development in the second year. At 6 months, infants (n = 36) were tested using a preferential listening procedure assessing their sustained attention to instrumental and sung versions of the same novel tunes whilst the parents completed an ad-hoc questionnaire assessing home musical interactions with their infants. Language development was assessed with a follow-up when the infants were 14-month-old (n = 26). The main results showed that 6-month-olds preferred listening to sung rather than instrumental melodies, and that self-reported high levels of parental singing with their infants [i] were associated with less pronounced preference for the sung over the instrumental version of the tunes at 6 months, and [ii] predicted significant advantages on the language outcomes in the second year. The results are interpreted in relation to conceptions of developmental plasticity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fabia Franco
- Department of Psychology, Middlesex University, London, UK
| | - Chiara Suttora
- Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Maria Spinelli
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Science, University G. d'Annunzio Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
| | - Iryna Kozar
- Department of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Mirco Fasolo
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Science, University G. d'Annunzio Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
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9
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Byers‐Heinlein K, Bergmann C, Savalei V. Six solutions for more reliable infant research. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2296] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Christina Bergmann
- Language Development Department Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen the Netherlands
| | - Victoria Savalei
- Department of Psychology University of British Columbia Vancouver Canada
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10
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Koile E, Cristia A. Toward Cumulative Cognitive Science: A Comparison of Meta-Analysis, Mega-Analysis, and Hybrid Approaches. Open Mind (Camb) 2021; 5:154-173. [PMID: 35024529 PMCID: PMC8746126 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2020] [Accepted: 08/19/2021] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
There is increasing interest in cumulative approaches to science, in which instead of analyzing the results of individual papers separately, we integrate information qualitatively or quantitatively. One such approach is meta-analysis, which has over 50 years of literature supporting its usefulness, and is becoming more common in cognitive science. However, changes in technical possibilities by the widespread use of Python and R make it easier to fit more complex models, and even simulate missing data. Here we recommend the use of mega-analyses (based on the aggregation of data sets collected by independent researchers) and hybrid meta- mega-analytic approaches, for cases where raw data are available for some studies. We illustrate the three approaches using a rich test-retest data set of infants' speech processing as well as synthetic data. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the three approaches from the viewpoint of a cognitive scientist contemplating their use, and limitations of this article, to be addressed in future work.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ezequiel Koile
- National Research University Higher School of Economics
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
| | - Alejandrina Cristia
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, De´partement d’e´tudes cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University
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11
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Hahn LE, Benders T, Fikkert P, Snijders TM. Infants' Implicit Rhyme Perception in Child Songs and Its Relationship With Vocabulary. Front Psychol 2021; 12:680882. [PMID: 34552527 PMCID: PMC8450347 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.680882] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2021] [Accepted: 08/02/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Rhyme perception is an important predictor for future literacy. Assessing rhyme abilities, however, commonly requires children to make explicit rhyme judgements on single words. Here we explored whether infants already implicitly process rhymes in natural rhyming contexts (child songs) and whether this response correlates with later vocabulary size. In a passive listening ERP study, 10.5 month-old Dutch infants were exposed to rhyming and non-rhyming child songs. Two types of rhyme effects were analysed: (1) ERPs elicited by the first rhyme occurring in each song (rhyme sensitivity) and (2) ERPs elicited by rhymes repeating after the first rhyme in each song (rhyme repetition). Only for the latter a tentative negativity for rhymes from 0 to 200 ms after the onset of the rhyme word was found. This rhyme repetition effect correlated with productive vocabulary at 18 months-old, but not with any other vocabulary measure (perception at 10.5 or 18 months-old). While awaiting future replication, the study indicates precursors of phonological awareness already during infancy and with ecologically valid linguistic stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura E Hahn
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands.,International Max Planck Research School for the Language Sciences, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Titia Benders
- Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Paula Fikkert
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Tineke M Snijders
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands.,Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
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Yu X, Ferradal SL, Sliva DD, Dunstan J, Carruthers C, Sanfilippo J, Zuk J, Zöllei L, Boyd E, Gagoski B, Ou Y, Grant PE, Gaab N. Functional Connectivity in Infancy and Toddlerhood Predicts Long-Term Language and Preliteracy Outcomes. Cereb Cortex 2021; 32:bhab230. [PMID: 34347052 PMCID: PMC10847903 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab230] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Functional connectivity (FC) techniques can delineate brain organization as early as infancy, enabling the characterization of early brain characteristics associated with subsequent behavioral outcomes. Previous studies have identified specific functional networks in infant brains that underlie cognitive abilities and pathophysiology subsequently observed in toddlers and preschoolers. However, it is unknown whether and how functional networks emerging within the first 18 months of life contribute to the development of higher order, complex functions of language/literacy at school-age. This 5-year longitudinal imaging project starting in infancy, utilized resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and demonstrated prospective associations between FC in infants/toddlers and subsequent language and foundational literacy skills at 6.5 years old. These longitudinal associations were shown independently of key environmental influences and further present in a subsample of infant imaging data (≤12 months), suggesting early emerged functional networks specifically linked to high-order language and preliteracy skills. Moreover, emergent language skills in infancy and toddlerhood contributed to the prospective associations, implicating a role of early linguistic experiences in shaping the FC correlates of long-term oral language skills. The current results highlight the importance of functional organization established in infancy and toddlerhood as a neural scaffold underlying the learning process of complex cognitive functions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xi Yu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Silvina L Ferradal
- Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA
| | - Danielle D Sliva
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
| | - Jade Dunstan
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Clarisa Carruthers
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Joseph Sanfilippo
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Jennifer Zuk
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - Lilla Zöllei
- A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02129, USA
| | - Emma Boyd
- A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02129, USA
| | - Borjan Gagoski
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Fetal Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - Yangming Ou
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Fetal Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02215, USA
- Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - P Ellen Grant
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Fetal Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02215, USA
- Department of Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Nadine Gaab
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Harvard Graduate School of Education Boston, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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de Klerk M, de Bree E, Veen D, Wijnen F. Speech discrimination in infants at family risk of dyslexia: Group and individual-based analyses. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 206:105066. [PMID: 33571710 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105066] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2020] [Revised: 11/10/2020] [Accepted: 11/30/2020] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Deficiencies in discriminating and identifying speech sounds have been widely attested in individuals with dyslexia as well as in young children at family risk (FR) of dyslexia. A speech perception deficit has been hypothesized to be causally related to reading and spelling difficulties. So far, however, early speech perception of FR infants has not been assessed at different ages within a single experimental design. Furthermore, a combination of group- and individual-based analyses has not been made. In this cross-sectional study, vowel discrimination of 6-, 8-, and 10-month-old Dutch FR infants and their nonrisk (no-FR) peers was assessed. Infants (N = 196) were tested on a native English /aː/-/eː/ and non-native English /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast using a hybrid visual habituation paradigm. Frequentist analyses were used to interpret group differences. Bayesian hierarchical modeling was used to classify individuals as speech sound discriminators. FR and no-FR infants discriminated the native contrast at all ages. However, individual classification of the no-FR infants suggests improved discrimination with age, but not for the FR infants. No-FR infants discriminated the non-native contrast at 6 and 10 months, but not at 8 months. FR infants did not show evidence of discriminating the contrast at any of the ages, with 0% being classified as discriminators. The group- and individual-based data are complementary and together point toward speech perception differences between the groups. The findings also indicate that conducting individual analyses on hybrid visual habituation outcomes is possible. These outcomes form a fruitful avenue for gaining more understanding of development, group differences, and prospective relationships.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maartje de Klerk
- Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, 3512 JK Utrecht, the Netherlands.
| | - Elise de Bree
- Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, 1001 NG Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Duco Veen
- Department of Methodology and Statistics, Utrecht University, 3584 CH Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Frank Wijnen
- Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, 3512 JK Utrecht, the Netherlands
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14
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Wang Y, Seidl A, Cristia A. Infant speech perception and cognitive skills as predictors of later vocabulary. Infant Behav Dev 2020; 62:101524. [PMID: 33373908 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101524] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/14/2020] [Revised: 12/12/2020] [Accepted: 12/14/2020] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Research has identified bivariate correlations between speech perception and cognitive measures gathered during infancy as well as correlations between these individual measures and later language outcomes. However, these correlations have not all been explored together in prospective longitudinal studies. The goal of the current research was to compare how early speech perception and cognitive skills predict later language outcomes using a within-participant design. To achieve this goal, we tested 97 5- to 7-month-olds on two speech perception tasks (stress pattern preference, native vowel discrimination) and two cognitive tasks (visual recognition memory, A-not-B) and later assessed their vocabulary outcomes at 18 and 24 months. Frequentist statistical analyses showed that only native vowel discrimination significantly predicted vocabulary. However, Bayesian analyses suggested that evidence was ambiguous between null and alternative hypotheses for all infant predictors. These results highlight the importance of recognizing and addressing challenges related to infant data collection, interpretation, and replication in the developmental field, a roadblock in our route to understanding the contribution of domain-specific and domain-general skills for language acquisition. Future methodological development and research along similar lines is encouraged to assess individual differences in infant speech perception and cognitive skills and their predictability for language development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuanyuan Wang
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, United States.
| | - Amanda Seidl
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, United States
| | - Alejandrina Cristia
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS, IEC-ENS, EHESS, France
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15
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Lee JC, Dick AS, Tomblin JB. Altered brain structures in the dorsal and ventral language pathways in individuals with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Brain Imaging Behav 2020; 14:2569-2586. [PMID: 31933046 PMCID: PMC7354888 DOI: 10.1007/s11682-019-00209-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulty learning and using language, and this difficulty cannot be attributed to other developmental conditions. The aim of the current study was to examine structural differences in dorsal and ventral language pathways between adolescents and young adults with and without DLD (age range: 14-27 years) using anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Results showed age-related structural brain differences in both dorsal and ventral pathways in individuals with DLD. These findings provide evidence for neuroanatomical correlates of persistent language deficits in adolescents/young adults with DLD, and further suggest that this brain-language relationship in DLD is better characterized by taking account the dynamic course of the disorder along development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joanna C Lee
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA.
| | | | - J Bruce Tomblin
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA
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16
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Cristia A. Language input and outcome variation as a test of theory plausibility: The case of early phonological acquisition. DEVELOPMENTAL REVIEW 2020. [DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2020.100914] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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17
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Junge C, Everaert E, Porto L, Fikkert P, de Klerk M, Keij B, Benders T. Contrasting behavioral looking procedures: a case study on infant speech segmentation. Infant Behav Dev 2020; 60:101448. [PMID: 32593957 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101448] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2018] [Revised: 12/21/2019] [Accepted: 04/03/2020] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
This paper compared three different procedures common in infant speech perception research: a headturn preference procedure (HPP) and a central-fixation (CF) procedure with either automated eye-tracking (CF-ET) or manual coding (CF-M). In theory, such procedures all measure the same underlying speech perception and learning mechanisms and the choice between them should ideally be irrelevant in unveiling infant preference. However, the ManyBabies study (ManyBabies Consortium, 2019), a cross-laboratory collaboration on infants' preference for child-directed speech, revealed that choice of procedure can modulate effect sizes. Here we examined whether procedure also modulates preference in paradigms that add a learning phase prior to test: a speech segmentation paradigm. Such paradigms are particularly important for studying the learning mechanisms infants can employ for language acquisition. We carried out the same familiarization-then-test experiment with the three different procedures (32 unique infants per procedure). Procedures were compared on various factors, such as overall effect, average looking time and drop-out rate. The key observations are that the HPP yielded a larger familiarity preference, but also reported larger drop-out rates. This raises questions about the generalizability of results. We argue that more collaborative research into different procedures in infant preference experiments is required in order to interpret the variation in infant preferences more accurately.
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Affiliation(s)
- Caroline Junge
- Departments of Experimental and Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
| | - Emma Everaert
- Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| | - Lyan Porto
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
| | - Paula Fikkert
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
| | - Maartje de Klerk
- Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| | - Brigitta Keij
- Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| | - Titia Benders
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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18
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Wang Y, Williams R, Dilley L, Houston DM. A meta-analysis of the predictability of LENA™ automated measures for child language development. DEVELOPMENTAL REVIEW 2020; 57. [PMID: 32632339 DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2020.100921] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Early language environment plays a critical role in child language development. The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA™) system allows researchers and clinicians to collect daylong recordings and obtain automated measures to characterize a child's language environment. This meta-analysis evaluates the predictability of LENA's automated measures for language skills in young children. We systematically searched reports for associations between LENA's automated measures, specifically, adult word count (AWC), conversational turn count (CTC), and child vocalization count (CVC), and language skills in children younger than 48 months. Using robust variance estimation, we calculated weighted mean effect sizes and conducted moderator analyses exploring the factors that might affect this relationship. The results revealed an overall medium effect size for the correlation between LENA's automated measures and language skills. This relationship was largely consistent regardless of child developmental status, publication status, language assessment modality and method, or the age at which the LENA recording was taken; however, the effect was weakly moderated by the gap between LENA recordings and language measures taken. Among the three measures, there were medium associations between CTC and CVC and language, whereas there was a small-to-medium association between AWC and language. These findings extend beyond validation work conducted by the LENA Research Foundation and suggest certain predictive strength of LENA's automated measures for child language. We discussed possible mechanisms underlying the observed associations, as well as the theoretical, methodological, and clinical implications of these findings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuanyuan Wang
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, 915 Olentangy River Road # 4000, Columbus, OH
| | - Rondeline Williams
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, 915 Olentangy River Road # 4000, Columbus, OH
| | - Laura Dilley
- Department of Communicative Sciences & Disorders, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824
| | - Derek M Houston
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, 915 Olentangy River Road # 4000, Columbus, OH.,Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, 700 Children's Drive, Columbus, OH 43205
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19
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Donnelly S, Kidd E. Individual differences in lexical processing efficiency and vocabulary in toddlers: A longitudinal investigation. J Exp Child Psychol 2020; 192:104781. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104781] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2019] [Revised: 11/28/2019] [Accepted: 11/29/2019] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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20
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Frost RLA, Jessop A, Durrant S, Peter MS, Bidgood A, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Monaghan P. Non-adjacent dependency learning in infancy, and its link to language development. Cogn Psychol 2020; 120:101291. [PMID: 32197131 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/30/2019] [Revised: 02/20/2020] [Accepted: 03/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
To acquire language, infants must learn how to identify words and linguistic structure in speech. Statistical learning has been suggested to assist both of these tasks. However, infants' capacity to use statistics to discover words and structure together remains unclear. Further, it is not yet known how infants' statistical learning ability relates to their language development. We trained 17-month-old infants on an artificial language comprising non-adjacent dependencies, and examined their looking times on tasks assessing sensitivity to words and structure using an eye-tracked head-turn-preference paradigm. We measured infants' vocabulary size using a Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) concurrently and at 19, 21, 24, 25, 27, and 30 months to relate performance to language development. Infants could segment the words from speech, demonstrated by a significant difference in looking times to words versus part-words. Infants' segmentation performance was significantly related to their vocabulary size (receptive and expressive) both currently, and over time (receptive until 24 months, expressive until 30 months), but was not related to the rate of vocabulary growth. The data also suggest infants may have developed sensitivity to generalised structure, indicating similar statistical learning mechanisms may contribute to the discovery of words and structure in speech, but this was not related to vocabulary size.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Andrew Jessop
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands
| | | | | | | | | | - Caroline F Rowland
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands; University of Liverpool, UK
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21
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Rooijen R, Bekkers E, Junge C. Beneficial effects of the mother's voice on infants’ novel word learning. INFANCY 2019; 24:838-856. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12312] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2019] [Revised: 08/28/2019] [Accepted: 08/28/2019] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Rianne Rooijen
- Department of Experimental Psychology Helmholtz Institute Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
- Department of Developmental Psychology Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
| | - Eline Bekkers
- The Generation R Study Group Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam The Netherlands
| | - Caroline Junge
- Department of Experimental Psychology Helmholtz Institute Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
- Department of Developmental Psychology Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
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22
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A step forward: Bayesian hierarchical modelling as a tool in assessment of individual discrimination performance. Infant Behav Dev 2019; 57:101345. [PMID: 31563856 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.101345] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2018] [Revised: 07/25/2019] [Accepted: 07/31/2019] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
Individual assessment of infants' speech discrimination is of great value for studies of language development that seek to relate early and later skills, as well as for clinical work. The present study explored the applicability of the hybrid visual fixation paradigm (Houston et al., 2007) and the associated statistical analysis approach to assess individual discrimination of a native vowel contrast, /aː/ - /eː/, in Dutch 6 to 10-month-old infants. Houston et al. found that 80% (8/10) of the 9-month-old infants successfully discriminated the contrast between pseudowords boodup - seepug. Using the same approach, we found that 12% (14/117) of the infants in our sample discriminated the highly salient /aː/ -/eː/ contrast. This percentage was reduced to 3% (3/117) when we corrected for multiple testing. Bayesian hierarchical modeling indicated that 50% of the infants showed evidence of discrimination. Advantages of Bayesian hierarchical modeling are that 1) there is no need for a correction for multiple testing and 2) better estimates at the individual level are obtained. Thus, individual speech discrimination can be more accurately assessed using state of the art statistical approaches.
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23
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Arnon I. Statistical Learning, Implicit Learning, and First Language Acquisition: A Critical Evaluation of Two Developmental Predictions. Top Cogn Sci 2019; 11:504-519. [PMID: 31056836 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12428] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2018] [Revised: 03/22/2019] [Accepted: 04/04/2019] [Indexed: 01/23/2023]
Abstract
The role of distributional information in language learning, and learning more generally, has been studied extensively in both the statistical learning and the implicit learning literatures. Despite the similarity in research questions, the two literatures have remained largely separate. Here, we draw on findings from the two traditions to critically evaluate two developmental predictions that are central to both. The first is the question of age invariance: Does learning improve during development or is it fully developed in infancy? The combined findings suggest that both implicit and statistical learning improve during childhood, contra the age invariance prediction. This raises questions about the role of implicit statistical learning (ISL) in explaining the age-related deterioration in language learning: Children's better language learning abilities cannot be attributed to their improved distributional learning skills. The second issue we examine is the predictive relation to language outcomes: Does variation in learning predict variation in language outcomes? While there is evidence for such links, there is concern in both research traditions about the reliability of the tasks used with children. We present data suggesting that commonly used statistical learning measures may not capture stable individual differences in children, undermining their utility for assessing the link to language outcomes in developmental samples. The evaluation of both predictions highlights the empirical parallels between the implicit and statistical learning literatures, and the need to better integrate their developmental investigation. We go on to discuss several of the open challenges facing the study of ISL during development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inbal Arnon
- Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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24
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Do current statistical learning tasks capture stable individual differences in children? An investigation of task reliability across modality. Behav Res Methods 2019; 52:68-81. [DOI: 10.3758/s13428-019-01205-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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25
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Sorcinelli A, Ference J, Curtin S, Vouloumanos A. Preference for speech in infancy differentially predicts language skills and autism-like behaviors. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 178:295-316. [PMID: 30448530 PMCID: PMC6467219 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.09.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2018] [Revised: 09/16/2018] [Accepted: 09/17/2018] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
Early emerging biases for conspecific vocalizations are a hallmark of early development. Typically developing neonates listen to speech more than many other sounds, including non-biological non-speech sounds, but listen equally to speech and monkey calls. By 3 months of age, however, infants prefer speech over both non-biological non-speech sounds and monkey calls. We examined whether different listening preferences continue to develop along different developmental trajectories and whether listening preferences are related to developmental outcomes. Given the static preference for speech over non-biological non-speech sounds and the dynamic preference for speech over monkey calls between birth and 3 months, we examined whether 9-month-olds prefer speech over non-biological non-speech sounds (Experiment 1) and prefer speech over monkey calls (Experiment 2). We compared preferences for sounds in infants at low risk (SIBS-TD) and infants at high risk (SIBS-A) of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a heterogeneous population who differ from typically developing infants in their preferences for speech, and examined whether listening preferences predict vocabulary and autism-like behaviors at 12 months for both groups. At 9 months, SIBS-TD listened longer to speech than to non-speech sounds and listened longer to monkey calls than to speech, whereas SIBS-A listened longer to speech than to non-speech sounds but listened equally to speech and monkey calls. SIBS-TD's preferences did not predict immediate developmental outcomes. In contrast, SIBS-A who preferred speech over non-speech or monkey calls had larger vocabularies and fewer markers of autism-like behaviors at 12 months, which could have positive developmental implications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Sorcinelli
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
| | - Jennifer Ference
- Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada
| | - Suzanne Curtin
- Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada
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26
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Song JY, Demuth K, Morgan J. Input and Processing Factors Affecting Infants' Vocabulary Size at 19 and 25 Months. Front Psychol 2018; 9:2398. [PMID: 30559696 PMCID: PMC6287191 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02398] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/07/2018] [Accepted: 11/14/2018] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
This study examined the relative contributions of three factors to individual differences in vocabulary development: the acoustic quality of mothers' speech, the quantity of mothers' speech, and infants' ability to recognize words. To examine the quality and quantity of mothers' speech, recordings were collected from 48 mothers when their infants were 17 months old. Infants' ability to recognize words was gauged by their performance in a perception experiment at 19 months. We examined the relationship between these measures and infants' vocabulary size at 19 and 25 months. The quantity of mothers' speech accounted for the greatest amount of variance in infants' vocabulary size at 19 months; infants' ability to recognize words followed next. At 25 months, when mothers' speech alone is presumably no longer the primary input for infants, infants' ability to recognize words at 19 months was a better predictor of vocabulary size. The acoustic quality of mothers' speech was not correlated with infants' vocabulary size at either age. The findings highlight the importance of considering multiple factors that contribute to early word learning, providing a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the facilitation process.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jae Yung Song
- Department of Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, United States
| | - Katherine Demuth
- Department of Linguistics, Centre for Language Sciences, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - James Morgan
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States
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27
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Mahr T, Edwards J. Using language input and lexical processing to predict vocabulary size. Dev Sci 2018; 21:e12685. [PMID: 29781230 PMCID: PMC6324580 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12685] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2016] [Accepted: 03/30/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Children learn words by listening to caregivers, and the quantity and quality of early language input predict later language development. Recent research suggests that word recognition efficiency may influence the relationship between input and vocabulary growth. We asked whether language input and lexical processing at 28-39 months predicted vocabulary size one year later in 109 preschoolers. Input was measured using adult word counts from LENA recordings. We used the visual world paradigm and measured lexical processing as the rate of change in proportion of looks to target. Regression analysis showed that lexical processing did not constrain the effect of input on vocabulary size. We also found that input and processing were more reliable predictors of receptive than expressive vocabulary growth.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tristan Mahr
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Jan Edwards
- Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
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28
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Sundara M, Mateu VE. Lexical stress constrains English-learning infants' segmentation in a non-native language. Cognition 2018; 181:105-116. [PMID: 30176405 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2014] [Revised: 07/03/2018] [Accepted: 08/22/2018] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
Abstract
Infants' ability to segment words in fluent speech is affected by their language experience. In this study we investigated the conditions under which infants can segment words in a non-native language. Using the Head-turn Preference Procedure, we found that monolingual English-learning 8-month-olds can segment bisyllabic words in Spanish (trochees and iambs) but not French (iambs). Our results are incompatible with accounts that rely on distributional learning, language rhythm similarity, or target word prosodic shape alone. Instead, we show that monolingual English-learning infants are able to segment words in a non-native language as long as words have stress, as is the case in English. More specifically, we show that even in a rhythmically different non-native language, English-learning infants can find words by detecting stressed syllables and treating them as word onsets or offsets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Megha Sundara
- Department of Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles, United States.
| | - Victoria E Mateu
- Department of Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles, United States
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29
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Kalashnikova M, Burnham D. Infant-directed speech from seven to nineteen months has similar acoustic properties but different functions. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2018; 45:1035-1053. [PMID: 29502549 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000917000629] [Citation(s) in RCA: 40] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
This longitudinal study assessed three acoustic components of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) - pitch, affect, and vowel hyperarticulation - in relation to infants' age and their expressive vocabulary size. These three individual components were measured in IDS addressed to infants at 7, 9, 11, 15, and 19 months (N = 18). All three components were exaggerated at all ages in mothers' IDS compared to their adult-directed speech. Importantly, the only significant predictor of infants' expressive vocabulary size at 15 and 19 months was vowel hyperarticulation, but only at 9 months and beyond, not at 7 months, and not pitch or affect at any age. These results set apart vowel hyperarticulation in IDS to infants as the critical IDS component for vocabulary development. Thus IDS, specifically the degree of vowel hyperarticulation therein, is a vehicle by which parents can provide the most optimal speech quality for their infants' linguistic and communicative development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marina Kalashnikova
- The MARCS Institute for Brain,Behaviour and Development,Western Sydney University
| | - Denis Burnham
- The MARCS Institute for Brain,Behaviour and Development,Western Sydney University
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30
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Kidd E, Junge C, Spokes T, Morrison L, Cutler A. Individual Differences in Infant Speech Segmentation: Achieving the Lexical Shift. INFANCY 2018. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12256] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/03/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Evan Kidd
- The Australian National University
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
| | | | - Tara Spokes
- The Australian National University
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
| | - Lauren Morrison
- The Australian National University
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
| | - Anne Cutler
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
- Western Sydney University
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31
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Swingley D, Alarcon C. Lexical Learning May Contribute to Phonetic Learning in Infants: A Corpus Analysis of Maternal Spanish. Cogn Sci 2018; 42:10.1111/cogs.12620. [PMID: 29785714 PMCID: PMC7224410 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12620] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2017] [Revised: 02/06/2018] [Accepted: 02/09/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
In their first year, infants begin to learn the speech sounds of their language. This process is typically modeled as an unsupervised clustering problem in which phonetically similar speech-sound tokens are grouped into phonetic categories by infants using their domain-general inference abilities. We argue here that maternal speech is too phonetically variable for this account to be plausible, and we provide phonetic evidence from Spanish showing that infant-directed Spanish vowels are more readily clustered over word types than over vowel tokens. The results suggest that infants' early adaptation to native-language phonetics depends on their word-form lexicon, implicating a much wider range of potential sources of influence on infants' developmental trajectories in language learning.
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32
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Singh L. He said, she said: effects of bilingualism on cross-talker word recognition in infancy. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2018; 45:498-510. [PMID: 28554334 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000917000186] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to examine effects of bilingual language input on infant word segmentation and on talker generalization. In the present study, monolingually and bilingually exposed infants were compared on their abilities to recognize familiarized words in speech and to maintain generalizable representations of familiarized words. Words were first presented in the context of sentences to infants and then presented to infants in isolation during a test phase. During test, words were produced by a talker of the same gender and by a talker of the opposite gender. Results demonstrated that both bilingual and monolingual infants were able to recognize familiarized words to a comparable degree. Moreover, both bilingual and monolingual infants recognized words in spite of talker variation. Results demonstrated robust word recognition and talker generalization in monolingual and bilingual infants at 8 months of age.
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33
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Bergmann C, Cristia A. Environmental Influences on Infants’ Native Vowel Discrimination: The Case of Talker Number in Daily Life. INFANCY 2018. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12232] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Christina Bergmann
- LSCP; Département d'Etudes Cognitives; ENS, EHESS, CNRS; PSL Research University
- Language Development Department; Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
| | - Alejandrina Cristia
- LSCP; Département d'Etudes Cognitives; ENS, EHESS, CNRS; PSL Research University
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34
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Kidd E, Donnelly S, Christiansen MH. Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing. Trends Cogn Sci 2018; 22:154-169. [PMID: 29277256 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.11.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 106] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2017] [Revised: 11/24/2017] [Accepted: 11/28/2017] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
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35
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Cristia A. Can infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic answer. Cognition 2017; 170:312-327. [PMID: 29102857 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.09.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/25/2016] [Revised: 06/29/2017] [Accepted: 09/27/2017] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
Two of the key tasks facing the language-learning infant lie at the level of phonology: establishing which sounds are contrastive in the native inventory, and determining what their possible syllabic positions and permissible combinations (phonotactics) are. In 2002-2003, two theoretical proposals, one bearing on how infants can learn sounds (Maye, Werker, & Gerken, 2002) and the other on phonotactics (Chambers, Onishi, & Fisher, 2003), were put forward on the pages of Cognition, each supported by two laboratory experiments, wherein a group of infants was briefly exposed to a set of pseudo-words, and plausible phonological generalizations were tested subsequently. These two papers have received considerable attention from the general scientific community, and inspired a flurry of follow-up work. In the context of questions regarding the replicability of psychological science, the present work uses a meta-analytic approach to appraise extant empirical evidence for infant phonological learning in the laboratory. It is found that neither seminal finding (on learning sounds and learning phonotactics) holds up when close methodological replications are integrated, although less close methodological replications do provide some evidence in favor of the sound learning strand of work. Implications for authors and readers of this literature are drawn out. It would be desirable that additional mechanisms for phonological learning be explored, and that future infant laboratory work employ paradigms that rely on constrained and unambiguous links between experimental exposure and measured infant behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alejandrina Cristia
- LSCP, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, France
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Nakeva von Mentzer C, Sundström M, Enqvist K, Hällgren M. Assessing speech perception in Swedish school-aged children: preliminary data on the Listen–Say test. LOGOP PHONIATR VOCO 2017; 43:106-119. [DOI: 10.1080/14015439.2017.1380076] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Martina Sundström
- Department of Neuroscience, Unit for Speech Language Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Karin Enqvist
- Department of Neuroscience, Unit for Speech Language Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Mathias Hällgren
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Section of Audiology, Linköping University Hospital, Linköping, Sweden
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Adriaans F, Swingley D. Prosodic exaggeration within infant-directed speech: Consequences for vowel learnability. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2017; 141:3070. [PMID: 28599541 PMCID: PMC5418129 DOI: 10.1121/1.4982246] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2016] [Revised: 04/12/2017] [Accepted: 04/12/2017] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
Perceptual experiments with infants show that they adapt their perception of speech sounds toward the categories of the native language. How do infants learn these categories? For the most part, acoustic analyses of natural infant-directed speech have suggested that phonetic categories are not presented to learners as separable clusters of sounds in acoustic space. As a step toward explaining how infants begin to solve this problem, the current study proposes that the exaggerated prosody characteristic of infant-directed speech may highlight for infants certain speech-sound tokens that collectively form more readily identifiable categories. A database is presented, containing vowel measurements in a large sample of natural American English infant-directed speech. Analyses of the vowel space show that prosodic exaggeration in infant-directed speech has the potential to support distributional vowel learning by providing the learner with a subset of "high-quality" tokens that infants might attend to preferentially. Categorization models trained on prosodically exaggerated tokens outperformed models that were trained on tokens that were not exaggerated. Though focusing on more prominent, exaggerated tokens does not provide a solution to the categorization problem, it would make it easier to solve.
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Affiliation(s)
- Frans Adriaans
- Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Daniel Swingley
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 425 South University Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
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Melvin SA, Brito NH, Mack LJ, Engelhardt LE, Fifer WP, Elliott AJ, Noble KG. Home Environment, But Not Socioeconomic Status, is Linked to Differences in Early Phonetic Perception Ability. INFANCY 2017; 22:42-55. [PMID: 32874141 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12145] [Citation(s) in RCA: 49] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Infants perceptually tune to the phonemes of their native languages in the first year of life, thereby losing the ability to discriminate non-native phonemes. Infants who perceptually tune earlier have been shown to develop stronger language skills later in childhood. We hypothesized that socioeconomic disparities, which have been associated with differences in the quality and quantity of language in the home, would contribute to individual differences in phonetic discrimination. Seventy-five infants were assessed on measures of phonetic discrimination at 9 months, on the quality of the home environment at 15 months, and on language abilities at both ages. Phonetic discrimination did not vary according to socioeconomic status (SES), but was significantly associated with the quality of the home environment. This association persisted when controlling for 9-month expressive language abilities, rendering it less likely that infants with better expressive language skills were simply engendering higher quality home interactions. This suggests that infants from linguistically richer home environments may be more tuned to their native language and therefore less able to discriminate non-native contrasts at 9 months relative to infants whose home environments are less responsive. These findings indicate that home language environments may be more critical than SES in contributing to early language perception, with possible implications for language development more broadly.
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Newman RS, Rowe ML, Bernstein Ratner N. Input and uptake at 7 months predicts toddler vocabulary: the role of child-directed speech and infant processing skills in language development. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2016; 43:1158-1173. [PMID: 26300377 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000915000446] [Citation(s) in RCA: 86] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
Both the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversational child-directed utterances in an experimental paradigm; and (c) the children's vocabulary outcomes at age 2;0. Both repetitiveness in maternal input and the child's speech segmentation skills at age 0;7 predicted language outcomes at 2;0; moreover, while these factors were somewhat inter-related, they each had independent effects on toddler vocabulary skill, and there was no interaction between the two.
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Jones G. The influence of children’s exposure to language from two to six years: The case of nonword repetition. Cognition 2016; 153:79-88. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.04.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2014] [Revised: 04/26/2016] [Accepted: 04/26/2016] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
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Tsuji S, Bergmann C, Cristia A. Community-Augmented Meta-Analyses: Toward Cumulative Data Assessment. PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2016; 9:661-5. [PMID: 26186116 DOI: 10.1177/1745691614552498] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
We present the concept of a community-augmented meta-analysis (CAMA), a simple yet novel tool that significantly facilitates the accumulation and evaluation of previous studies within a specific scientific field. A CAMA is a combination of a meta-analysis and an open repository. Like a meta-analysis, it is centered around a psychologically relevant topic and includes methodological details and standardized effect sizes. As in a repository, data do not remain undisclosed and static after publication but can be used and extended by the research community, as anyone can download all information and can add new data via simple forms. Based on our experiences with building three CAMAs, we illustrate the concept and explain how CAMAs can facilitate improving our research practices via the integration of past research, the accumulation of knowledge, and the documentation of file-drawer studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sho Tsuji
- RIKEN Brain Sciences Institute, Wako, Japan
| | - Christina Bergmann
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS, DEC-ENS, EHESS, Paris, France
| | - Alejandrina Cristia
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS, DEC-ENS, EHESS, Paris, France
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Polka L, Orena AJ, Sundara M, Worrall J. Segmenting words from fluent speech during infancy - challenges and opportunities in a bilingual context. Dev Sci 2016; 20. [DOI: 10.1111/desc.12419] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2015] [Accepted: 01/15/2016] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Linda Polka
- School of Communication Sciences & Disorders; McGill University; Canada
- Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music; McGill University; Canada
| | - Adriel John Orena
- School of Communication Sciences & Disorders; McGill University; Canada
- Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music; McGill University; Canada
| | - Megha Sundara
- Department of Linguistics; University of California; Los Angeles USA
| | - Jennifer Worrall
- School of Communication Sciences & Disorders; McGill University; Canada
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Ter Schure SMM, Junge CMM, Boersma PPG. Semantics guide infants' vowel learning: Computational and experimental evidence. Infant Behav Dev 2016; 43:44-57. [PMID: 27130954 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.01.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2015] [Revised: 11/27/2015] [Accepted: 01/15/2016] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
In their first year, infants' perceptual abilities zoom in on only those speech sound contrasts that are relevant for their language. Infants' lexicons do not yet contain sufficient minimal pairs to explain this phonetic categorization process. Therefore, researchers suggested a bottom-up learning mechanism: infants create categories aligned with the frequency distributions of sounds in their input. Recent evidence shows that this bottom-up mechanism may be complemented by the semantic context in which speech sounds occur, such as simultaneously present objects. To test this hypothesis, we investigated whether discrimination of a non-native vowel contrast improves when sounds from the contrast were paired consistently or randomly with two distinct visually presented objects, while the distribution of speech tokens suggested a single broad category. This was assessed in two ways: computationally, namely in a neural network simulation, and experimentally, namely in a group of 8-month-old infants. The neural network, trained with a large set of sound-meaning pairs, revealed that two categories emerge only if sounds are consistently paired with objects. A group of 49 real 8-month-old infants did not immediately show sensitivity to the pairing condition; a later test at 18 months with some of the same infants, however, showed that this sensitivity at 8 months interacted with their vocabulary size at 18 months. This interaction can be explained by the idea that infants with larger future vocabularies are more positively influenced by consistent training (and/or more negatively influenced by inconsistent training) than infants with smaller future vocabularies. This suggests that consistent pairing with distinct visual objects can help infants to discriminate speech sounds even when the auditory information does not signal a distinction. Together our results give computational as well as experimental support for the idea that semantic context plays a role in disambiguating phonetic auditory input.
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Affiliation(s)
- S M M Ter Schure
- Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
| | - C M M Junge
- Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
| | - P P G Boersma
- Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
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Cristia A, Seidl A, Singh L, Houston D. Test-Retest Reliability in Infant Speech Perception Tasks. INFANCY 2016. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12127] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Alejandrina Cristia
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (ENS, EHESS, CNRS); Département d'Etudes Cognitives; Ecole Normale Supérieure; PSL Research University
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Junge C, Cutler A. Early word recognition and later language skills. Brain Sci 2014; 4:532-59. [PMID: 25347057 PMCID: PMC4279141 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci4040532] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2014] [Revised: 09/10/2014] [Accepted: 10/08/2014] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent behavioral and electrophysiological evidence has highlighted the long-term importance for language skills of an early ability to recognize words in continuous speech. We here present further tests of this long-term link in the form of follow-up studies conducted with two (separate) groups of infants who had earlier participated in speech segmentation tasks. Each study extends prior follow-up tests: Study 1 by using a novel follow-up measure that taps into online processing, Study 2 by assessing language performance relationships over a longer time span than previously tested. Results of Study 1 show that brain correlates of speech segmentation ability at 10 months are positively related to 16-month-olds' target fixations in a looking-while-listening task. Results of Study 2 show that infant speech segmentation ability no longer directly predicts language profiles at the age of five. However, a meta-analysis across our results and those of similar studies (Study 3) reveals that age at follow-up does not moderate effect size. Together, the results suggest that infants' ability to recognize words in speech certainly benefits early vocabulary development; further observed relationships of later language skills to early word recognition may be consequent upon this vocabulary size effect.
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Affiliation(s)
- Caroline Junge
- Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands.
| | - Anne Cutler
- MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia.
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