Infant low-frequency EEG cortical power, cortical tracking and phase-amplitude coupling predicts language a year later.

Cortical signals have been shown to track acoustic and linguistic properties of continuous speech. This phenomenon has been measured in both children and adults, reflecting speech understanding by adults as well as cognitive functions such as attention and prediction. Furthermore, atypical low-frequency cortical tracking of speech is found in children with phonological difficulties (developmental dyslexia).

Visual perspective taking and action understanding.

Understanding what others are doing is a fundamental aspect of social cognition and a skill that is arguably linked to visuospatial perspective taking (VPT), the ability to apprehend the spatial layout of a scene from another's perspective. Yet, with few and notable exceptions, action understanding and VPT are rarely studied together. Participants (43 females, 37 males) made judgements about the spatial layout of objects in a scene from the perspective of an avatar who was positioned at 0°, 90°, 270° or 180° relative to the participant.

Cortical tracking of visual rhythmic speech by 5- and 8-month-old infants: Individual differences in phase angle relate to language outcomes up to 2 years.

It is known that the rhythms of speech are visible on the face, accurately mirroring changes in the vocal tract. These low-frequency visual temporal movements are tightly correlated with speech output, and both visual speech (e.g.

Precursors to infant sensorimotor synchronization to speech and non-speech rhythms: A longitudinal study.

Impaired sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) to acoustic rhythm may be a marker of atypical language development. Here, Motion Capture was used to assess gross motor rhythmic movement at six time points between 5- and 11 months of age. Infants were recorded drumming to acoustic stimuli of varying linguistic and temporal complexity: drumbeats, repeated syllables and nursery rhymes.

Decoding speech information from EEG data with 4-, 7- and 11-month-old infants: Using convolutional neural network, mutual information-based and backward linear models.

Background: Computational models that successfully decode neural activity into speech are increasing in the adult literature, with convolutional neural networks (CNNs), backward linear models, and mutual information (MI) models all being applied to neural data in relation to speech input. This is not the case in the infant literature.

New Method: Three different computational models, two novel for infants, were applied to decode low-frequency speech envelope information.

Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life.

Even prior to producing their first words, infants are developing a sophisticated speech processing system, with robust word recognition present by 4-6 months of age. These emergent linguistic skills, observed with behavioural investigations, are likely to rely on increasingly sophisticated neural underpinnings. The infant brain is known to robustly track the speech envelope, however previous cortical tracking studies were unable to demonstrate the presence of phonetic feature encoding.

Neural phase angle from two months when tracking speech and non-speech rhythm linked to language performance from 12 to 24 months.

Atypical phase alignment of low-frequency neural oscillations to speech rhythm has been implicated in phonological deficits in developmental dyslexia. Atypical phase alignment to rhythm could thus also characterize infants at risk for later language difficulties. Here, we investigate phase-language mechanisms in a neurotypical infant sample.

Cortical Tracking of Sung Speech in Adults vs Infants: A Developmental Analysis.

Here we duplicate a neural tracking paradigm, previously published with infants (aged 4 to 11 months), with adult participants, in order to explore potential developmental similarities and differences in entrainment. Adults listened and watched passively as nursery rhymes were sung or chanted in infant-directed speech. Whole-head EEG (128 channels) was recorded, and cortical tracking of the sung speech in the delta (0.

Neural detection of changes in amplitude rise time in infancy.

Amplitude rise times play a crucial role in the perception of rhythm in speech, and reduced perceptual sensitivity to differences in rise time is related to developmental language difficulties. Amplitude rise times also play a mechanistic role in neural entrainment to the speech amplitude envelope. Using an ERP paradigm, here we examined for the first time whether infants at the ages of seven and eleven months exhibit an auditory mismatch response to changes in the rise times of simple repeating auditory stimuli.

Delta- and theta-band cortical tracking and phase-amplitude coupling to sung speech by infants.

The amplitude envelope of speech carries crucial low-frequency acoustic information that assists linguistic decoding at multiple time scales. Neurophysiological signals are known to track the amplitude envelope of adult-directed speech (ADS), particularly in the theta-band. Acoustic analysis of infant-directed speech (IDS) has revealed significantly greater modulation energy than ADS in an amplitude-modulation (AM) band centred on ∼2 Hz.

Machine learning accurately classifies neural responses to rhythmic speech vs. non-speech from 8-week-old infant EEG.

Currently there are no reliable means of identifying infants at-risk for later language disorders. Infant neural responses to rhythmic stimuli may offer a solution, as neural tracking of rhythm is atypical in children with developmental language disorders. However, infant brain recordings are noisy.

The surplus identification task and limits to multiattribute consumer choice.

We introduce and demonstrate a novel experimental method for investigating the accuracy of consumer decision making. The Surplus Identification (S-ID) task exploits techniques from detection theory. Experimental control over surpluses is established by incentivizing participants to adopt a predetermined, objectively defined preference function.

Event-related potentials discriminate familiar and unusual goal outcomes in 5-month-olds and adults.

Previous event-related potential (ERP) work has indicated that the neural processing of action sequences develops with age. Although adults and 9-month-olds use a semantic processing system, perceiving actions activates attentional processes in 7-month-olds. However, presenting a sequence of action context, action execution and action conclusion could challenge infants' developing working memory capacities.

Reaching back: the relative strength of the retroactive emotional attentional blink.

Visual stimuli with emotional content appearing in close temporal proximity either before or after a target stimulus can hinder conscious perceptual processing of the target via an emotional attentional blink (EAB). This occurs for targets that appear after the emotional stimulus (forward EAB) and for those appearing before the emotional stimulus (retroactive EAB). Additionally, the traditional attentional blink (AB) occurs because detection of any target hinders detection of a subsequent target.

Dissociating associative and motor aspects of action understanding: Processing of dual-ended tools by 16-month-old infants.

When learning about the functions of novel tools, it is possible that infants may use associative and motoric processes. This study investigated the ability of 16-month-olds to associate the orientation in which an actor held a dual-function tool with the actor's prior demonstrated interest in one of two target objects, and their use of the tool on that target. The actors' hand posture did not differ between conditions.

The developmental cognitive neuroscience of action: semantics, motor resonance and social processing.

The widespread use of EEG methods and the introduction of new brain imaging methods such as near-infrared spectroscopy have made cognitive neuroscience research with infants more feasible, resulting in an explosion of new findings. Among the long-established study of the neural correlates of face and speech perception in infancy, there has been an abundance of recent research on infant perception and production of action and concomitant neurocognitive development. In this review, three significant strands of developmental action research are discussed.

My hand or yours? Markedly different sensitivity to egocentric and allocentric views in the hand laterality task.

In the hand laterality task participants judge the handedness of visually presented stimuli--images of hands shown in a variety of postures and views--and indicate whether they perceive a right or left hand. The task engages kinaesthetic and sensorimotor processes and is considered a standard example of motor imagery. However, in this study we find that while motor imagery holds across egocentric views of the stimuli (where the hands are likely to be one's own), it does not appear to hold across allocentric views (where the hands are likely to be another person's).

Differing roles for the dominant and non-dominant hands in the hand laterality task.

Determining the handedness of visually presented stimuli is thought to involve two separate stages--a rapid, implicit recognition of laterality followed by a confirmatory mental rotation of the matching hand. In two studies, we explore the role of the dominant and non-dominant hands in this process. In Experiment 1, participants judged stimulus laterality with either their left or right hand held behind their back or with both hands resting in the lap.