Preterm and Term Infants' Perception of Temporally Coordinated Syllable–Object Pairings: Implications for Lexical Development

Abstract

These findings suggest that even near-term preterm infants present with a delay in their sensitivity to synchrony in syllable–object pairings relative to term infants. Given the important role that synchrony plays in word mapping at 6–9 months, this early delay in sensitivity to synchrony might be an indicator of word mapping delays found in older preterm infants.

Behavioral and Neural Foundations of Multisensory Face-Voice Perception in Infancy

“…Furthermore, difficulties appear to persist, to some degree, with only small improvements noted in visual recovery to an auditory syllable, but no improvements for visual object changes after 2 months. Thus, from such results it has been argued that early auditory dominance, which gives way to greater multisensory integration in term infants, persists in preterm infants (Gogate et al, 2014). If this is the case, biases in attention, learning, and memory for multisensory information in early development are likely different for preterm infants compared to term infants.…”

“…For example, Pickens and colleagues (1994) showed an atypical pattern of development in integrating synchronous face and voice information among preterm infants (see also Lawson, Ruff, McCarton-Daum, Kurtzberg, and Vaughan, 1984 for example with object-sound integration). More recently, Gogate, Maganti, and Perenyi (2014) showed that preterm infants have difficulty temporally binding changes to synchronous syllable-object pairings and that these difficulties are not solely due to attentional deficits. Furthermore, difficulties appear to persist, to some degree, with only small improvements noted in visual recovery to an auditory syllable, but no improvements for visual object changes after 2 months.…”

Maternal object naming is less adapted to preterm infants’ than to term infants’ word mapping

“…Their fragile neurosensory system was likely overwhelmed by the word–object mapping context, where mothers often used synchronous naming especially to younger infants. Their delayed perception (of synchrony, Gogate et al, ; face–voice synchrony, Pickens et al, ; Imafuku et al, ) implies a missed opportunity to learn word–object relations from mothers at both visits, requiring alternate learning mechanisms (Gogate & Hollich, ). Mothers reported a receptive vocabulary in their preterm infants of 12 months (Table ).…”

Assessing individual differences in the speed and accuracy of intersensory processing in young children: The intersensory processing efficiency protocol.

“…If successful, this would provide the first measure of intersensory processing that could be utilized across a variety of populations and ages without changes to the protocol. It could be used to characterize intersensory processing in children who show impairments, including children with ASD (Bebko et al, 2006; Stevenson et al, 2014), children born preterm (Gogate et al, 2014; Pickens et al, 1994), and children with dyslexia (Hairston, Burdette, Flowers, Wood, & Wallace, 2005). Because the IPEP provides both social and nonsocial events, it can identify processing impairments specific to social events.…”

“…We included both social (women speaking) and nonsocial (objects impacting a surface) events because they serve as a foundation for language, cognitive, and social development and children with autism show selective impairments in perception of social events, but relatively spared performance with nonsocial events (Dawson, Meltzoff, Osterling, Rinaldi, & Brown, 1998; Patten et al, 2016; Swettenham et al, 1998). Pre-term infants may demonstrate a similar pattern of impairments in intersensory matching for social but not nonsocial events (Gogate, Maganti, & Perenyi, 2014; Pickens et al, 1994; Provasi, Lemoine-Lardennois, Orriols, & Morange-Majoux, 2017). …”