Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: Evidence for developmental reorganization.

Saffran, Jenny R.; Griepentrog, Gregory J.

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.37.1.74

Cited by 174 publications

(195 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…The model differs from DOP in that it uses unsupervised, rather than supervised, learning which makes for a more veridical cognitive model because phrase boundaries in music, like word boundaries in speech, are not explicitly marked for the listener. The IDyOM model takes the same overall approach and background in experimental psychology (Saffran 2003;Saffran and Griepentrog 2001;Saffran et al 1999) as the TP/PMI models (see section 2.3.5). In contrast to these models, however, IDyOM uses a range of strategies to improve the accuracy of its conditional probability estimates.…”

Section: The Idyom Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

2010

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Introduction Grouping and boundary perception are central to the understanding and modelling of core tasks in many areas of cognitive science. They are fundamental processes in, for example, natural language processing (eg speech segmentation and word discoveryöBrent 1999b; Jusczyk 1997), motor learning (eg identifying behavioural episodes öReynolds et al 2007; Newtson 1973), memory storage and retrieval (eg chunkingöKurby and Zacks 2007) and visual perception (eg analysing spatial organisation öMarr 1982). Our focus in this paper is on the perception and cognition of music (Krumhansl 1990; Temperley 2001), where the process by which the human perceptual system groups sequential musical elements together is one of the most fundamental issues. In particular, we examine the grouping of musical elements into contiguous segments that occur sequentially in time or, to put it another way, the identification of boundaries between the final element of one segment and the first element of the subsequent one. This way of structuring a musical surface is usually referred to as grouping (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983) or segmentation (Cambouropoulos 2006). We distinguish this kind of perceptual aggregation of auditory elements from the integration, or fusion, of auditory elements that occur simultaneously in time and also from the segregation of parallel auditory streams (Bregman 1990). In musical terms, the kinds of groups we consider correspond with motifs, phrases, sections and other aspects of musical form. We use the term grouping structure to refer to a piece of music structured in this way. It is taken that, just as speech is perceptually segmented into phonemes, and then words which subsequently provide the building blocks for the perception of phrases and complete utterances (Brent 1999b; Jusczyk 1997), motifs or phrases in music are identified by listeners, stored in memory and made available for inclusion in higher-level structural groups (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983; Peretz 1989; Tan et al 1981). The lowlevel organisation of the musical surface into groups allows the use of these primitive perceptual units in more complex structural processing and may alleviate demands on memory.

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Section: The Idyom Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

2010

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“…In typically developing infants there is a natural shift from an initial focus on absolute pitch to the eventual dominance of relative pitch (Saffran and Griepentrog 2001;Stalinski and Schellenberg 2010). Absolute pitch refers to the encoding or identification of a pitch independent of its relation to other sounds, and relative pitch refers to the encoding of changes in pitch between sounds (intervals), which are invariant over transpositions in absolute pitch (e.g., Takeuchi and Hulse 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Learning to ignore absolute pitch in favor of relative distances is necessary in order to generate general and abstract speech sound categories. Relying on absolute pitch information, instead, would result in overly specific categories of sounds with little room for generalization (Crespi 2013;Saffran and Griepentrog 2001). Relevant in this regard is the observation that 7-month-olds can only generalize words across voices when the speakers are of the same sex, but not when speakers differ in sex, presumably due to the different frequency ranges of male and female voices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

Boets

Verhoeven

Wouters

et al. 2014

J Autism Dev Disord

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We investigated low-level auditory spectral and temporal processing in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and early language delay compared to matched typically developing controls. Auditory measures were designed to target right versus left auditory cortex processing (i.e. frequency discrimination and slow amplitude modulation (AM) detection versus gap-in-noise detection and faster AM detection), and to pinpoint the task and stimulus characteristics underlying putative superior spectral processing in ASD. We observed impaired frequency discrimination in the ASD group and suggestive evidence of poorer temporal resolution as indexed by gapin-noise detection thresholds. These findings question the evidence of enhanced spectral sensitivity in ASD and do not support the hypothesis of superior right and inferior left hemispheric auditory processing in ASD.

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“…One important discovery using this technique has come from the work of Saffran and colleagues (2)(3)(4)(5), who have examined the powerful role that statistical learning-the detection of consistent patterns of sounds-plays in infant word segmentation. Syllables that are part of the same word tend to follow one another predictably, whereas syllables that span word boundaries do not.…”

Section: Discovering the Units Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingly, infants are also able to detect the probabilities with which musical tones predict one another, suggesting that the statistical learning abilities used for word segmentation may also be used for learning materials such as music (4). In particular, infants, but not adults, can track the statistical structure of sequences of absolute pitches in a tone sequence learning task (5). These findings suggest that at least some of the statistical learning mechanisms described above are not applied solely to language learning.…”

Section: Discovering the Units Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The acquisition of language by children

Saffran

Senghas

Trueswell

2001

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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I magine that you are faced with the following challenge. You must discover the internal structure of a system that contains tens of thousands of units, all generated from a small set of materials. These units, in turn, can be assembled into an infinite number of combinations. Although only a subset of those combinations is correct, the subset itself is for all practical purposes infinite. Somehow you must converge on the structure of this system to use it to communicate. And you are a very young child.This system is human language. The units are words, the materials are the small set of sounds from which they are constructed, and the combinations are the sentences into which they can be assembled. Given the complexity of this system, it seems improbable that mere children could discover its underlying structure and use it to communicate. Yet most do so with eagerness and ease, all within the first few years of life.Below we describe three recent lines of research that examine language learning, comprehension, and genesis by children. We begin by asking how infants break into the system, finding the words within the acoustic stream that serves as input to language learning. We then consider how children acquire the ability to rapidly combine linguistic elements to determine the relationships between these elements. Finally, we examine how children impose grammatical structure onto their perceived input, even to the extent of creating a new language when none is available. These investigations provide insight into the ways in which children extract, manipulate, and create the complex structures that exist within natural languages. Discovering the Units of LanguageBefore infants can begin to map words onto objects in the world, they must determine which sound sequences are words. To do so, infants must uncover at least some of the units that belong to their native language from a largely continuous stream of sounds in which words are seldom surrounded by pauses. Despite the difficulty of this reverse-engineering problem, infants successfully segment words from fluent speech from Ϸ7 months of age.How do infants learn the units of their native language so rapidly? One fruitful approach to answering this question has been to present infants with miniature artificial languages that embody specific aspects of natural language structure. Once an infant has been familiarized with a sample of this language, a new sample, or a sample from a different language, is presented to the infant. Subtle measures of surprise (e.g., duration of looking toward the new sounds) are then used to assess whether the infant perceives the new sample as more of the same, or something different. In this fashion, we can ask what the infant extracted from the artificial language, which can lead to insights regarding the learning mechanisms underlying the earliest stages of language acquisition (1).One important discovery using this technique has come from the work of Saffran and colleagues (2-5), who have examined the powerful role that statisti...

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Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: Evidence for developmental reorganization.

Cited by 174 publications

References 66 publications

The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

The acquisition of language by children

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