Infants Segment Words from Songs—An EEG Study

Abstract

Children’s songs are omnipresent and highly attractive stimuli in infants’ input. Previous work suggests that infants process linguistic–phonetic information from simplified sung melodies. The present study investigated whether infants learn words from ecologically valid children’s songs. Testing 40 Dutch-learning 10-month-olds in a familiarization-then-test electroencephalography (EEG) paradigm, this study asked whether infants can segment repeated target words embedded in songs during familiarization and subsequently recognize those words in continuous speech in the test phase. To replicate previous speech work and compare segmentation across modalities, infants participated in both song and speech sessions. Results showed a positive event-related potential (ERP) familiarity effect to the final compared to the first target occurrences during both song and speech familiarization. No evidence was found for word recognition in the test phase following either song or speech. Comparisons across the stimuli of the present and a comparable previous study suggested that acoustic prominence and speech rate may have contributed to the polarity of the ERP familiarity effect and its absence in the test phase. Overall, the present study provides evidence that 10-month-old infants can segment words embedded in songs, and it raises questions about the acoustic and other factors that enable or hinder infant word segmentation from songs and speech.

Six‐month‐old infants recognize phrases in song and speech

“…The present results significantly extend previous research on infants' musical grouping abilities by using ecologically valid musical stimuli and by requiring infants to group native song melodies into perceptual chunks while the song unfolds Krumhansl 1990 andNazzi et al, 2000;Hawthorne & Gerken, 2013). This study also extends our knowledge on infants' recognition of phonological units in song lyrics from syllables (François et al, 2017;Lebedeva & Kuhl, 2010;Suppanen et al, 2019;Thiessen & Saffran, 2009), rhymes (Hahn et al, 2018), and single words (Snijders et al, 2020) to larger prosodic units, namely phrases. The potential functional relevance of these findings will be discussed below.…”

“…Nevertheless, the current study provided no evidence for easier segmentation in ID song than ID speech. This is contrary to previous studies which reported a song benefit for infants' linguistic processing (François et al, 2017;Lebedeva & Kuhl, 2010;Thiessen & Saffran, 2009), but is in line with other work where no processing benefit for songs was observed (Snijders et al, 2020;Suppanen et al, 2019). In the following, we will discuss possible reasons for the lack of a song advantage in the current study.…”

“…However, other descriptions of infants' linguistic input have been broadened to include ID song (Bergelson, Amatuni, Dailey, Koorathota, & Tor, 2019;Soderstrom & Wittebolle, 2013). The present data contribute to the mounting evidence that songs can indeed be a source for infants' implicit linguistic learning (François et al, 2017;Hahn et al, 2018;Lebedeva & Kuhl, 2010;Snijders et al, 2020;Suppanen et al, 2019;Thiessen & Saffran, 2009). Consequently, ID song should be included in descriptions of the linguistically relevant input that infants receive.…”

“…We will use the paradigm described above that has successfully revealed infants' phrase segmentation of ID speech (for Dutch: Johnson & Seidl, 2008; the original study for English: Nazzi et al, 2000) with a new sample of Dutch 6-month-olds and a new version of the Dutch stimuli and extend the paradigm to ID song, using natural song material that matches the ID speech stimuli in content and syntactic structure. Our approach significantly extends previous work in two ways: First, infants' processing of song lyrics has so far been limited to smaller phonological and lexical building blocks (François et al, 2017;Hahn et al, 2018;Lebedeva & Kuhl, 2010;Snijders et al, 2020;Suppanen et al, 2019;Thiessen & Saffran, 2009). We will extend the scope of this research to phrases, cognitive units which are relevant not only for the perception of song structure but also for lexical and syntactic development in infants' native language.…”

“…Yet, songs often contain language in the song lyrics and thereby entail the possibility of language learning for the infant listener. Previous research provides evidence that infants are sensitive to small phonological units like syllables and words in song lyrics: For example, already before their first birthday infants recognize changes in the syllable order in songs (François et al, 2017;Lebedeva & Kuhl, 2010;Suppanen, Huotilainen, & Ylinen, 2019;Thiessen & Saffran, 2009), differentiate between rhyming and non-rhyming songs (Hahn, Benders, Snijders, & Fikkert, 2018), and learn novel words recurring in the song lyrics (Snijders, Benders, & Fikkert, 2020).…”