Event-related potentials to an english/spanish syllabic contrast in mexican 10-13-month-old infants.

We report brain electrophysiological responses from 10- to 13-month-old Mexican infants while listening to native and foreign CV-syllable contrasts differing in Voice Onset Time (VOT). All infants showed normal auditory event-related potential (ERP) components. Our analyses showed ERP evidence that Mexican infants are capable of discriminating their native sounds as well as the acoustically salient (aspiration) foreign contrast.

Principal component analyses and scalp distribution of the auditory P150-250 and N250-550 to speech contrasts in Mexican and American infants.

We report a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the scalp distribution of the normalized peak amplitude values for speech-related auditory Event-related Potentials (ERP) P150-250 and N250-550 in 7-, 11-, and 20-month-old American infants learning English and in 10-13-month-old Mexican infants learning Spanish. After assessing the infant auditory ERP P-N complex using PCA, we evaluated the topographic distribution of each of the discriminatory phases to native and non-native CV-syllabic contrasts used in Spanish and English. We found that the first two Principal Components for each contrast type across ages showing a maximization of differences between the P150-250 and the N250-550 waves, explain more than 70% of the variance.