Infant Directed Speech Enhances Statistical Learning in Newborn Infants: An ERP Study.

Statistical learning and the social contexts of language addressed to infants are hypothesized to play important roles in early language development. Previous behavioral work has found that the exaggerated prosodic contours of infant-directed speech (IDS) facilitate statistical learning in 8-month-old infants. Here we examined the neural processes involved in on-line statistical learning and investigated whether the use of IDS facilitates statistical learning in sleeping newborns.

Fast parametric evaluation of central speech-sound processing with mismatch negativity (MMN).

The aim of this study was to develop a paradigm for obtaining a multi-feature profile for central auditory processing of different magnitudes of prosodic and phonetic changes in speech sounds. We recorded the MMNs to three vowel identity changes, three magnitudes of changes in intensity, and vowel duration as well as to two magnitudes of pitch changes from semi-synthetic vowels in 34min. Furthermore, we examined how the type and magnitude of deviation affect the size and timing of the MMN.

Implicit segmentation of a stream of syllables based on transitional probabilities: an MEG study.

Statistical segmentation of continuous speech, i.e., the ability to utilise transitional probabilities between syllables in order to detect word boundaries, is reflected in the brain's auditory event-related potentials (ERPs).

Statistical language learning in neonates revealed by event-related brain potentials.

Background: Statistical learning is a candidate for one of the basic prerequisites underlying the expeditious acquisition of spoken language. Infants from 8 months of age exhibit this form of learning to segment fluent speech into distinct words. To test the statistical learning skills at birth, we recorded event-related brain responses of sleeping neonates while they were listening to a stream of syllables containing statistical cues to word boundaries.

Electrophysiological evidence of illusory audiovisual speech percept in human infants.

How effortlessly and quickly infants acquire their native language remains one of the most intriguing questions of human development. Our study extends this question into the audiovisual domain, taking into consideration visual speech cues, which were recently shown to have more importance for young infants than previously anticipated [Weikum WM, Vouloumanos A, Navarra J, Soto-Faraco S, Sebastián-Gallés N, Werker JF (2007) Science 316:1159]. A particularly interesting phenomenon of audiovisual speech perception is the McGurk effect [McGurk H, MacDonald J (1976) Nature 264:746-748], an illusory speech percept resulting from integration of incongruent auditory and visual speech cues.

Visual speech contributes to phonetic learning in 6-month-old infants.

Previous research has shown that infants match vowel sounds to facial displays of vowel articulation [Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A.