Speech Perception in Infants

Eimas, Peter D.; Siqueland, Einar R.; Jusczyk, Peter W.; Vigorito, James M.

doi:10.1126/science.171.3968.303

Cited by 1,821 publications

(862 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…This parallels behavioural evidence that human infants are innately capable of discriminating the timing relations between phoneme pairs 29 . Of course, this does not rule out plasticity and experience-dependent changes in delay tuning during maturation, as it has been demonstrated for other auditory-processing features in mammals (for example, see refs 30-32).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Auditory cortex of newborn bats is prewired for echolocation

et al. 2012

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neuronal computation of object distance from echo delay is an essential task that echolocating bats must master for spatial orientation and the capture of prey. In the dorsal auditory cortex of bats, neurons specifically respond to combinations of short frequency-modulated components of emitted call and delayed echo. These delay-tuned neurons are thought to serve in target range calculation. It is unknown whether neuronal correlates of active space perception are established by experience-dependent plasticity or by innate mechanisms. Here we demonstrate that in the first postnatal week, before onset of echolocation and flight, dorsal auditory cortex already contains functional circuits that calculate distance from the temporal separation of a simulated pulse and echo. This innate cortical implementation of a purely computational processing mechanism for sonar ranging should enhance survival of juvenile bats when they first engage in active echolocation behaviour and flight.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Auditory cortex of newborn bats is prewired for echolocation

et al. 2012

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“…These properties validate the notion of a distinct speech mode in the human brain. Further research should determine to what extent this organization is laid down in the course of language acquisition and to what extent it is already present early in infancy (Dehaene-Lambertz and Baillet, 1998;Dehaene-Lambertz et al, 2002;Eimas et al, 1971).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of switching from auditory to speech perception

et al. 2005

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Many people exposed to sinewave analogues of speech first report hearing them as electronic glissando and, later, when they switch into a dspeech modeT, hearing them as syllables. This perceptual switch modifies their discrimination abilities, enhancing perception of differences that cross phonemic boundaries while diminishing perception of differences within phonemic categories. Using high-density evoked potentials and fMRI in a discrimination paradigm, we studied the changes in brain activity that are related to this change in perception. With ERPs, we observed that phonemic coding is faster than acoustic coding: The electrophysiological mismatch response (MMR) occurred earlier for a phonemic change than for an equivalent acoustic change. The MMR topography was also more asymmetric for a phonemic change than for an acoustic change. In fMRI, activations were also significantly asymmetric, favoring the left hemisphere in both perception modes. Furthermore, switching to the speech mode significantly enhanced activation in the posterior parts of the left superior gyrus and sulcus relative to the non-speech mode. When responses to a change of stimulus were studied, a cluster of voxels in the supramarginal gyrus was activated significantly more by a phonemic change than by an acoustic change. These results demonstrate that phoneme perception in adults relies on a specific and highly efficient left-hemispheric network, which can be activated in top-down fashion when processing ambiguous speech/non-speech stimuli.

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“…The experimental procedure was a modification of the high-amplitude sucking technique (Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk, & Vigorito, 1971;Jusczyk, 1985b;Siqueland & DeLucia, 1969). For each infant, the high-amplitude sucking criterion and the baseline rate of highamplitude sucking were established prior to the presentation of any test stimuli.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

1992

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The present study explores how stimulus variability in speech production influences the 2-monthold infant's perception and memory for speech sounds. Experiment 1 focuses on the consequences of talker variability for the infant's ability to detect differences between speech sounds. When tested with high-amplitude sucking (HAS) procedure, infants who listened to versions of a syllable, such as /b∧g/, produced by 6 male and 6 female talkers, detected a change to another syllable, such as /d∧g/, uttered by the same group of talkers. In fact, infants exposed to multiple talkers performed as well as other infants who heard utterances produced by only a single talker. Moreover, other results showed that infants discriminate the voices of the individual talkers, although discriminating one mixed group of talkers (3 males and 3 females) from another is too difficult for them. Experiment 2 explored the consequences of talker variability on infants' memory for speech sounds. The HAS procedure was modified by introducing a 2-min delay period between the familiarization and test phases of the experiment. Talker variability impeded infants' encoding of speech sounds. Infants who heard versions of the same syllable produced by 12 different talkers did not detect a change to a new syllable produced by the same talkers after the delay period. However, infants who heard the same syllable produced by a single talker were able to detect the phonetic change after the delay. Finally, although infants who heard productions from a single talker retained information about the phonetic structure of the syllable during the delay, they apparently did not retain information about the identity of the talker. Experiment 3 reduced the range of variability across talkers and investigated whether variability interferes with retention of all speech information. Although reducing the range of variability did not lead to retention of phonetic details, infants did recognize a change in the gender of the talkers' voices (from male to female or vice versa) after a 2-min delay. Two additional experiments explored the consequences of limiting the variability to a single talker. In Experiment 4, with an immediate testing procedure, infants exposed to 12 different tokens of one syllable produced by the same talker discriminated

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Speech Perception in Infants

Cited by 1,821 publications

References 9 publications

Auditory cortex of newborn bats is prewired for echolocation

Auditory cortex of newborn bats is prewired for echolocation

Neural correlates of switching from auditory to speech perception

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

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