Predictive brain signals of linguistic development
Publication year
2013Number of pages
13 p.
Source
Frontiers in Psychology, 4, (2013), article 25ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ DCC PL
PI Group Neurobiology of Language
Former Organization
F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging
Journal title
Frontiers in Psychology
Volume
vol. 4
Languages used
English (eng)
Subject
110 000 Neurocognition of Language; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 1: Language and Communication; PsycholinguisticsAbstract
The ability to extract word forms from continuous speech is a prerequisite for constructing a vocabulary and emerges in the first year of life. Electrophysiological (ERP) studies of speech segmentation by 9- to 12-month-old listeners in several languages have found a left-localized negativity linked to word onset as a marker of word detection. We report an ERP study showing significant evidence of speech segmentation in Dutch-learning 7-month-olds. In contrast to the left-localized negative effect reported with older infants, the observed overall mean effect had a positive polarity. Inspection of individual results revealed two participant sub-groups: a majority showing a positive-going response, and a minority showing the left negativity observed in older age groups. We retested participants at age three, on vocabulary comprehension and word and sentence production. On every test, children who at 7 months had shown the negativity associated with segmentation of words from speech outperformed those who had produced positive-going brain responses to the same input. The earlier that infants show the left-localized brain responses typically indicating detection of words in speech, the better their early childhood language skills.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [227613]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [3564]
- Electronic publications [107286]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [28417]
- Open Access publications [76413]
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