Bias for consonantal information over vocalic information in 30-month-olds: Cross-linguistic evidence from French and English

Nazzi, Thierry; Floccia, Caroline; Moquet, B.; Butler, Joseph

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2008.05.003

Cited by 96 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Therefore, the activations observed in the present study suggest that vowel information is privileged in newborns' encoding and/or recognition of word-sounds. These data contrast with previous studies in adults and older infants, showing that participants rely primarily on consonants during lexical processing and word learning (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Different studies suggest that in adults (15)(16)(17)(18), and in infants older than 12 mo (19)(20)(21)(22)(23), consonantal sequences are encoded more robustly than vocalic sequences for the representation of words. It is possible that a similar bias (namely, preference for consonantal information when encoding words) is already present at birth.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…[Auditory sensory representations decay in about 1.5 s in newborns (46).] The contrast between the brain responses to consonant and vowel changes enables a comparison of early word-sound memories to more mature word-representations that are known to rely mainly on consonantal information (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). In addition, the present study investigates whether brain areas that support memory for verbal information in adults also support memory in newborn infants.…”

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Newborn’s brain activity signals the origin of word memories

Benavides-Varela

Hochmann

Montorsi

et al. 2012

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

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Recent research has shown that specific areas of the human brain are activated by speech from the time of birth. However, it is currently unknown whether newborns' brains also encode and remember the sounds of words when processing speech. The present study investigates the type of information that newborns retain when they hear words and the brain structures that support word-sound recognition. Forty-four healthy newborns were tested with the functional near-infrared spectroscopy method to establish their ability to memorize the sound of a word and distinguish it from a phonetically similar one, 2 min after encoding. Right frontal regions-comparable to those activated in adults during retrieval of verbal materialshowed a characteristic neural signature of recognition when newborns listened to a test word that had the same vowel of a previously heard word. In contrast, a characteristic novelty response was found when a test word had different vowels than the familiar word, despite having the same consonants. These results indicate that the information carried by vowels is better recognized by newborns than the information carried by consonants. Moreover, these data suggest that right frontal areas may support the recognition of speech sequences from the very first stages of language acquisition.neonate's memory | right frontal lobe | sound encoding | speech perception | oxyhemoglobin P revious studies have shown that newborns and human fetuses are able to remember word sounds (1-3) as well as to extract prosodic properties of speech (4) or identity relations between syllables (5, 6). However, neither the specific elements newborns encode from speech, nor the brain structures that mediate speech recognition at birth have been precisely characterized. Building on a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) paradigm used to test memory in newborns (7), the present study asks whether the newborn can remember all of the sounds [consonants (C) and vowels (V)] that form a bisyllabic CVCV word, or whether some of these segments are better encoded than others.Judging by the number of studies reporting early abilities to discriminate fine phonetic contrasts (8), one might be inclined to ascribe to newborns a very detailed representation of the sound of words. In fact, newborns appear to discriminate all phonetic contrasts of the languages of the world, including those that their parents can no longer distinguish. Newborns distinguish consonants differing in one feature-for example, place of articulation, voicing, manner of articulation (9-11), duration (12)-as well as vowel quality contrasts (13,14). Do the representations newborns hold in memory contain the full range of segmental details suggested by these discrimination capacities?Different studies suggest that in adults (15-18), and in infants older than 12 mo (19-23), consonantal sequences are encoded more robustly than vocalic sequences for the representation of words. It is possible that a similar bias (namely, preference for consonantal information when encodi...

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Newborn’s brain activity signals the origin of word memories

Benavides-Varela

Hochmann

Montorsi

et al. 2012

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

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“…French and English (Nazzi, Floccia, Moquet & Butler, 2009), and Italian (Toro, Nespor, Mehler & Bonatti, 2008), languages that all have different consonant to vowel ratios. Swedish has quite an unusual distribution with its 18 consonants and 18 vowels (Riad, 2014).…”

Section: Word and Non-word Repetitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repetition of words and non-words in typically developing children: The role of prosody

2014

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Repetition of words and non-words in typically developing children: The role of prosody. AbstractIn this study, segmental and prosodic aspects of word repetition and non-word repetition in typically developing children aged four to six years were investigated. Focus was on developmental differences, and on how tonal word accent and word length affect segment production accuracy. Prosodically controlled words and non-words were repeated by 44Swedish-speaking children. Repetition accuracy for both words and non-words increased with age, and was higher for words than non-words. Further, tonal word accents I and II provided different conditions for segment repetition in favor of accent II during both word repetition and non-word repetition for older children, but only during word repetition for younger children. This suggests age-dependent differences regarding how prosody is stored and integrated with segments. The findings have theoretical significance regarding the role of prosody in the perception, processing and production of phonological information. There are also clinical implications concerning the interpretation of repetition tasks and the potential use of prosody in speech and language intervention.

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“…Word learning tasks with pairs of words differing by one phoneme reveal that French-learning toddlers are sensitive to consonant but not to vowel contrasts until the age of 30 months (Havy & Nazzi, 2009;Nazzi, 2005;Nazzi & Bertoncini, 2009;Nazzi, Floccia, Moquet, & Butler, 2009;Nazzi & New, 2007). Moreover, even older French-learning children and French adults show a consonant bias in word learning tasks (Havy, Bertoncini & Nazzi, 2011;Havy et al, in press).…”

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confidence: 99%