The use of visual information in non-native speech sound discrimination across the first year of life

2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
pp. 2432-2432 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Kyle Danielson ◽  
Padmapriya A. Kandhadai ◽  
Janet F. Werker
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
First Year ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Sound Discrimination ◽  
First Year Of Life

Nederlandse Baby's Gebruiken Statistische Informatie om Spraakklanken te Leren Onderscheiden

2008 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 21-29
Author(s):  
Desiree Capel ◽  
Elise de Bree ◽  
Annemarie Kerkhoff ◽  
Frank Wijnen
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Frequency Distribution ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
Statistical Distribution ◽  
First Year ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Phonetic Variation ◽  
Bimodal Condition ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
First Year Of Life

Phonemes are perceived categorically and this perception is language-specific for adult listeners. Infants initially are "universal" listeners, capable of discriminating both native and non-native speech contrasts. This ability disappears in the first year of life. Maye et al. (Cognition (2002)) propose that statistical learning is responsible for this change to language-specific perception. They were the first to show that infants of 6 and 8 months old use statistical distribution of phonetic variation in learning to discriminate speech sounds. A replication of this experiment studied 10-11-month-old Dutch infants. They were exposed to either a bimodal or a unimodal frequency distribution of an 8-step speech sound continuum based on the Hindi voiced and voiceless retroflex plosives (/da/ en /ta/). The results show that only infants in the bimodal condition could discriminate the contrast, representing the speech sounds in two categories rather than one.

scholarly journals Perception of invisible masked objects in early infancy

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (27) ◽  
pp. e2103040118
Author(s):  
Yusuke Nakashima ◽  
So Kanazawa ◽  
Masami K. Yamaguchi
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Early Infancy ◽  
First Year ◽  
Backward Masking ◽  
Feed Forward ◽  
Recurrent Processing ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Visual Backward Masking

Recurrent loops in the visual cortex play a critical role in visual perception, which is likely not mediated by purely feed-forward pathways. However, the development of recurrent loops is poorly understood. The role of recurrent processing has been studied using visual backward masking, a perceptual phenomenon in which a visual stimulus is rendered invisible by a following mask, possibly because of the disruption of recurrent processing. Anatomical studies have reported that recurrent pathways are immature in early infancy. This raises the possibility that younger infants process visual information mainly in a feed-forward manner, and thus, they might be able to perceive visual stimuli that adults cannot see because of backward masking. Here, we show that infants under 7 mo of age are immune to visual backward masking and that masked stimuli remain visible to younger infants while older infants cannot perceive them. These results suggest that recurrent processing is immature in infants under 7 mo and that they are able to perceive objects even without recurrent processing. Our findings indicate that the algorithm for visual perception drastically changes in the second half of the first year of life.

Infant perception of audiovisual synchrony in fluent speech

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Ferran Pons ◽  
David J. Lewkowicz
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Processing ◽  
Video Clip ◽  
First Year ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
Fluent Speech ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Speech Events ◽  
Perceptual Narrowing ◽  
Do So

It is known that perception of audio–visual (A–V) temporal relations is affected by the type of stimulus used. This includes differences in A–V temporal processing of speech and non-speech events and of native vs. non-native speech. Similar differences have been found early in life, but no studies have investigated infant response to A–V temporal relations in fluent speech. Extant studies (Lewkowicz, 2010) investigating infant response to isolated syllables have found that infants can detect an A–V asynchrony (auditory leading visual) of 666 ms but not lower. Here, we investigated infant response to A–V asynchrony in fluent speech and whether linguistic experience plays a role in responsiveness. To do so, we tested 24 monolingual Spanish-learning and 24 monolingual Catalan-learning 8-month-old infants. First, we habituated the infants to an audiovisually synchronous video clip of a person speaking in Spanish and then tested them in separate test trials for detection of different degrees of A–V asynchrony (audio preceding video by 366, 500 or 666 ms). We found that infants detected A–V asynchronies of 666 and 500 ms and that they did so regardless of linguistic background. Thus, compared to previous results from infant studies with isolated audiovisual syllables, here we found that infants are more sensitive to A–V temporal relations inherent in fluent speech. Furthermore, given that responsiveness to non-native speech narrows during the first year of life, the absence of a language effect suggests that perceptual narrowing of A–V synchrony detection has not completed by 8 months of age.

Role of tactile receptor structures of the tongue in speech sound production of infants of the first year of life

1999 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119
Author(s):  
Z. V. Lyubimova ◽  
G. Zh. Sisengalieva ◽  
N. Yu. Chulkova ◽  
O. I. Smykova ◽  
S. V. Selin
Keyword(s):  
Sound Production ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
First Year ◽  
Tactile Receptor ◽  
First Year Of Life

scholarly journals The Effect of Visual Articulatory Information on the Neural Correlates of Non-native Speech Sound Discrimination

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. A. Plumridge ◽  
Michael P. Barham ◽  
Denise L. Foley ◽  
Anna T. Ware ◽  
Gillian M. Clark ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Sound ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Sound Discrimination

scholarly journals Perception of invisible masked objects in early infancy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusuke Nakashima ◽  
So Kanazawa ◽  
Masami K. Yamaguchi
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Early Infancy ◽  
First Year ◽  
Backward Masking ◽  
Recurrent Processing ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Visual Backward Masking

AbstractRecurrent loops in the visual cortex play a critical role in visual perception, which is likely not mediated by purely feedforward pathways. However, the development of recurrent loops is poorly understood. The role of recurrent processing has been studied using visual backward masking, a perceptual phenomenon in which a visual stimulus is rendered invisible by a following mask, possibly because of the disruption of recurrent processing. Anatomical studies have reported that recurrent pathways are immature in early infancy. This raises the possibility that younger infants process visual information mainly in a feedforward manner, and thus, they might be able to perceive visual stimuli that adults cannot see because of backward masking. Here, we show that infants under 7 months of age are immune to visual backward masking and that masked stimuli remain visible to younger infants while older infants cannot perceive them. These results suggest that recurrent processing is immature in infants under 7 months and that they are able to perceive objects even without recurrent processing. Our findings indicate that the algorithm for visual perception drastically changes in the second half of the first year of life.

Memory for complex visual objects but not for allocentric locations during the first year of life

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 332-338
Author(s):  
Eve Dupierrix ◽  
Anne Hillairet de Boisferon ◽  
Emmanuel Barbeau ◽  
Olivier Pascalis
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Paired Comparison ◽  
First Year ◽  
Spatial Relationships ◽  
Complex Objects ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Visual Paired Comparison ◽  
Location Binding ◽  
Square Configuration ◽  
First Year Of Life

Although human infants demonstrate early competence to retain visual information, memory capacities during infancy remain largely undocumented. In three experiments, we used a Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) task to examine abilities to encode identity (Experiment 1) and spatial properties (Experiments 2a and 2b) of unfamiliar complex visual patterns during the first year of life. In the first experiment, 6- and 9-month-old infants were familiarized with visual arrays composed of four abstract patterns arranged in a square configuration. Recognition memory was evaluated by presenting infants with the familiarized array paired with a novel array composed of four new patterns. The second couple of experiments aimed to examine infant ability to encode the spatial relationships between each pattern of the array (e.g., where is A in the square configuration). The 6-, 9- and 12-month-old infants were tested on a spatial version of the VPC task, in which the novel array was composed of the same patterns than the familiarized array but arranged differently within the square configuration. Results indicated that infants retained the identity of the patterns but not their specific spatial relationships within the square configuration (i.e., allocentric location of the patterns), suggesting either an immaturity of the processes involved in object-to-location binding, or the inappropriateness of unfamiliar complex objects to reveal such early allocentric abilities.

Distinctive Phonetic Features as Relevant and Irrelevant Stimulus Dimensions in Speech-Sound Discrimination Learning

1974 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-425
Author(s):  
Stuart I. Ritterman ◽  
Nancy C. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Discrimination Learning ◽  
Irrelevant Dimension ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Relevant Dimension ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
Sound Discrimination ◽  
Nonsense Syllables

Thirty-two college students were required to learn the relevant dimension in each of two randomized lists of auditorily presented stimuli. The stimuli consisted of seven pairs of CV nonsense syllables differing by two relevant dimension units and from zero to seven irrelevant dimension units. Stimulus dimensions were determined according to Saporta’s units of difference. No significant differences in performance as a function of number of the irrelevant dimensions nor characteristics of the relevant dimension were observed.

The Development of Swallowing Respiratory Coordination

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-24
Author(s):  
Maggie-Lee Huckabee
Keyword(s):  
Cortical Activation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Healthy Children ◽  
Nasal Airflow ◽  
Single Session ◽  
Primary Finding ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Cortical Modulation ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Swallowing Apnea

Abstract Research exists that evaluates the mechanics of swallowing respiratory coordination in healthy children and adults as well and individuals with swallowing impairment. The research program summarized in this article represents a systematic examination of swallowing respiratory coordination across the lifespan as a means of behaviorally investigating mechanisms of cortical modulation. Using time-locked recordings of submental surface electromyography, nasal airflow, and thyroid acoustics, three conditions of swallowing were evaluated in 20 adults in a single session and 10 infants in 10 sessions across the first year of life. The three swallowing conditions were selected to represent a continuum of volitional through nonvolitional swallowing control on the basis of a decreasing level of cortical activation. Our primary finding is that, across the lifespan, brainstem control strongly dictates the duration of swallowing apnea and is heavily involved in organizing the integration of swallowing and respiration, even in very early infancy. However, there is evidence that cortical modulation increases across the first 12 months of life to approximate more adult-like patterns of behavior. This modulation influences primarily conditions of volitional swallowing; sleep and naïve swallows appear to not be easily adapted by cortical regulation. Thus, it is attention, not arousal that engages cortical mechanisms.

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