The ability to extract word-forms from sentential contexts represents an initial step in infants' process toward lexical acquisition. By age 6 months the ability is just emerging and evidence of it is restricted to certain testing conditions. Most research has been developed with infants acquiring stress-timed languages (English, but also German and Dutch) whose rhythmic unit is not the syllable. Data from infants acquiring syllable-timed languages are still scarce and limited to French (European and Canadian), partially revealing some discrepancies with English regarding the age at which word segmentation ability emerges. Research reported here aims at broadening this cross-linguistic perspective by presenting first data on the early ability to segment monosyllabic word-forms by infants acquiring Spanish and Catalan. Three different language groups (two monolingual and one bilingual) and two different age groups (8- and 6-month-old infants) were tested using natural language and a modified version of the HPP with familiarization to passages and testing on words. Results revealed positive evidence of word segmentation in all groups at both ages, but critically, the pattern of preference differed by age. A novelty preference was obtained in the older groups, while the expected familiarity preference was only found at the younger age tested, suggesting more advanced segmentation ability with an increase in age. These results offer first evidence of an early ability for monosyllabic word segmentation in infants acquiring syllable-timed languages such as Spanish or Catalan, not previously described in the literature. Data show no impact of bilingual exposure in the emergence of this ability and results suggest rapid gains in early segmentation for words that match the rhythm unit of the native language.

Words and melodies are some of the basic elements infants are able to extract early in life from the auditory input. Whether melodic cues contained in songs can facilitate word-form extraction immediately after birth remained unexplored. Here, we provided converging neural and computational evidence of the early benefit of melodies for language acquisition. Twenty-eight neonates were tested on their ability to extract word-forms from continuous flows of sung and spoken syllabic sequences. We found different brain dynamics for sung and spoken streams and observed successful detection of word-form violations in the sung condition only. Furthermore, neonatal brain responses for sung streams predicted expressive vocabulary at 18 months as demonstrated by multiple regression and cross-validation analyses. These findings suggest that early neural individual differences in prosodic speech processing might be a good indicator of later language outcomes and could be considered as a relevant factor in the development of infants’ language skills.

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According to the World Health Organization, almost 15 million babies were born preterm all around the world in 2010 (Blencowe et al., 2012). Preterm birth can impact language and cognitive development. Around 25%-30% of very preterm infants (i.e. born between 28-and 32-week gestational age [wGA]) show delays in language acquisition that can be observed already in their 2nd year of life (Sansavini et al., 2010). Premature infants are also at risk for cognitive delays with immaturity levels at birth being linked to cognitive outcomes at school age (Bhutta, Cleves, Casey, Cradock, & Anand, 2002). In the speech perception domain, developmental timing differences between healthy full-terms (FT) and preterms have also been reported in early language discrimination skills, word segmentation and lexical stress differentiation in

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