Newborns' Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language

Mampe, Birgit; Friederici, Angela D.; Christophe, Anne; Wermke, Kathleen

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.064

Cited by 385 publications

(234 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Lecanuet, GraniereDeferre, Jacquet, and DeCasper (2000) who claim that differences in the structure of formants of the vowels make some syllables louder than the others causing the perceptual differences). Mampe, Friederici, Christophe, and Wermke (2009) found different cry patterns in case of French and German newborns according to their native-language prosody, which also demonstrate the special intrauterine sensitivity to prosodic features of languages. For testing the role of intrauterine experiences on early perceptual abilities GonzalezGomez and Nazzi (2012) tested if healthy preterm infants showed developmental lag in discrimination of consonant sequences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Ragó

Honbolygó

Róna

et al. 2014

Research in Developmental Disabilities

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Infants born prematurely are at higher risk for later linguistic deficits present in delayed or atypical processing of phonetic and prosodic information. In order to be able to specify the nature of this atypical development, it is important to investigate the role of early experience in language perception. According to the concept of Gonzalez-Gomez and Nazzi (2012) there is a special intrauterine sensitivity to the prosodic features of languages that should have a special role in language acquisition. Therefore, we may also assume that pre-and full-term infants having months difference in intrauterine experience show different maturation patterns of processing prosodic and phonetic information present at word level. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of these differences on word stress pattern vs. phoneme information processing. Two age groups of infants (6 and 10 month-olds) were included in our study. 21 of 46 of the total of infants investigated were prematurely born with low birth weight. We used the mismatch negativity (MMN) event related brain potential (ERP) component, a widely used electrophysiological correlate of acoustic change detection, for testing the assumed developmental changes of phoneme and word stress discrimination. In a passive oddball paradigm we used a word as standard, a pseudoword as phoneme deviant, and an illegally uttered word as stress deviant. Our results showed no differences in MMN responses in the phoneme deviant condition between the groups, meaning a relatively intact maturation of phoneme processing of preterm infants as compared to their contemporaries. However, the mismatch responses measured in the stress condition revealed significant betweengroup differences. These results strengthen the view that the total length of intrauterine experience influences the time of emergence of prosodic processing.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Ragó

Honbolygó

Róna

et al. 2014

Research in Developmental Disabilities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…It is therefore tempting to speculate that the sole prosodic information of the maternal sounds stimulus was sufficient to yield the observed increase in cortical thickness of the AC among our preterm newborn listeners. Prosodic features, such as melody, intensity, and rhythm, are known to be essential for language acquisition, and there is compelling evidence to suggest that newborns are strongly influenced by prosodic features of their native language long before first words are even produced (66)(67)(68)(69). The question of whether daily exposure to unfiltered maternal sounds would result in different structural patterns of brain maturation is still unclear and needs to be investigated in future studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation

Webb¹,

Heller

Benson

et al. 2015

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

189

106

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Brain development is largely shaped by early sensory experience. However, it is currently unknown whether, how early, and to what extent the newborn's brain is shaped by exposure to maternal sounds when the brain is most sensitive to early life programming. The present study examined this question in 40 infants born extremely prematurely (between 25-and 32-wk gestation) in the first month of life. Newborns were randomized to receive auditory enrichment in the form of audio recordings of maternal sounds (including their mother's voice and heartbeat) or routine exposure to hospital environmental noise. The groups were otherwise medically and demographically comparable. Cranial ultrasonography measurements were obtained at 30 ± 3 d of life. Results show that newborns exposed to maternal sounds had a significantly larger auditory cortex (AC) bilaterally compared with control newborns receiving standard care. The magnitude of the right and left AC thickness was significantly correlated with gestational age but not with the duration of sound exposure. Measurements of head circumference and the widths of the frontal horn (FH) and the corpus callosum (CC) were not significantly different between the two groups. This study provides evidence for experience-dependent plasticity in the primary AC before the brain has reached full-term maturation. Our results demonstrate that despite the immaturity of the auditory pathways, the AC is more adaptive to maternal sounds than environmental noise. Further studies are needed to better understand the neural processes underlying this early brain plasticity and its functional implications for future hearing and language development. auditory | brain | mother's voice | heartbeat | preterm newborns

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“…distinguish between languages based on their rhythmic properties (22), learn precociously the properties of intonation of their maternal language (23), and discriminate phonemic changes in syllables despite speaker variability (24). Moreover, by 4 mo of age, newborns exhibit phonological processing in left temporal brain areas, as evidenced by their enhanced sensitivity to phonetic changes that cross phonemic boundaries (25).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Language universals at birth

Gómez

Berent

Benavides-Varela

et al. 2014

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

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The evolution of human languages is driven both by primitive biases present in the human sensorimotor systems and by cultural transmission among speakers. However, whether the design of the language faculty is further shaped by linguistic biological biases remains controversial. To address this question, we used near-infrared spectroscopy to examine whether the brain activity of neonates is sensitive to a putatively universal phonological constraint. Across languages, syllables like blif are preferred to both lbif and bdif. Newborn infants (2-5 d old) listening to these three types of syllables displayed distinct hemodynamic responses in temporal-perisylvian areas of their left hemisphere. Moreover, the oxyhemoglobin concentration changes elicited by a syllable type mirrored both the degree of its preference across languages and behavioral linguistic preferences documented experimentally in adulthood. These findings suggest that humans possess early, experience-independent, linguistic biases concerning syllable structure that shape language perception and acquisition.human newborns | speech perception | NIRS | sonority | phonology

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Newborns' Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language

Cited by 385 publications

References 42 publications

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation

Language universals at birth

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