Early Language Learning and the Social Brain

Abstract

Explaining how every typically developing child acquires language is one of the grand challenges of cognitive neuroscience. Historically, language learning provoked classic debates about the contributions of innately specialized as opposed to general learning mechanisms. Now, new data are being brought to bear from studies that employ magnetoencephalograph (MEG), electroencephalograph (EEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies on young children. These studies examine the patterns of association between brain and behavioral measures. The resulting data offer both expected results and surprises that are altering theory. As we uncover what it means to be human through the lens of young children, and their ability to speak, what we learn will not only inform theories of human development, but also lead to the discovery of neural biomarkers, early in life, that indicate risk for language impairment and allow early intervention for children with developmental disabilities involving language.The earliest phases of language acquisition invoke a special fascination because they allow us to examine humans' extraordinary abilities to acquire what is arguably our most unique skill-the ability to speak. Humans' capacity for language provoked classic debates on nature versus nurture by equally strong proponents of nativism (Chomsky 1959) and learning (Skinner 1957). Although we are far beyond those debates and now informed by a great deal of data about infants, their innate predispositions, and their incredible abilities to learn once exposed to natural language (Saffran et al. 2006;Kuhl 2010Kuhl , 2011, we are only beginning to posit the mechanisms in the brain and mind of a child that enable language acquisition (e.g., Kuhl et al. 2014).In this paper, I advance a new hypothesis-that in the earliest phases of language acquisition, infants combine a powerful set of domain-general computational skills with their equally extraordinary social skills to "crack" the speech code. Furthermore, I hypothesize that the social brain-in ways we have yet to understand-"gates" the computational mechanisms underlying learning in the domain of language. My goal here isto discuss recent results that advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the social influences on language learning in infants.The assertion that social factors gate language learning, I argue, explains not only how typically developing children acquire language, but also why children with autism exhibit twin deficits in social cognition and language, and why nonhuman animals with impressive computational abilities do not acquire language. Moreover, the gating hypothesis may explain why social factors play a far more significant role than previously realized in human learning beyond language and throughout our lifetimes (Meltzoff et al. 2009).Using methods of systems neuroscience tailored for use with very young children, we can now explore how the integration of information across specialized brain systems such as language ...

Conceptualizing Social Attention in Developmental Research

“…Techniques utilized include eye gaze tracking, functional neuroimaging of the brain using socially salient visual stimuli (faces with different emotional expressions or gaze direction), electroencephalographic measurements that detect very rapid shifts in the pattern of electrical activity in the brain, and pharmacological probes that impact social perception and behavior. This literature has compared neural processing of faces vs. objects (for reviews see Dien, ; Hoehl & Peykarjou, ), but has not generally examined patterns of association between both brain and behavioral measures of social attention; one notable exception has documented relations between neural networks and language development processes in infants and young children (for a recent overview see Kuhl, ).…”

Temporal information in tones, broadband noise, and natural vocalizations is conveyed by differential spiking responses in the superior paraolivary nucleus

“…Enhanced discriminability between acoustic categories occurs at the perceptual “boundaries”—a capacity present already in infants (Fifer & Moon, ; Gervain, Berent, & Werker, ; Mampe, Friederici, Christophe, & Wermke, ; Phillips‐Silver & Trainor, ). The human ability to comprehend speech no doubt depends on both basic acoustic feature detection mechanisms and higher levels of phonetic processing involving learning and memory (Kuhl, ). A problem that arises in the endeavor to unravel the mechanisms of speech processing is how to distinguish the lower level sensory processes from the higher level cognition.…”

Los padres como promotores del desarrollo de lenguaje de bebés prematuros: propuesta de intervención temprana

“…Porque se sabe que la interacción social y las propiedades del habla adultoniño son de enorme influencia en la adquisición del lenguaje en los niños (Kuhl, 2014). Se conoce que el cerebro del niño tiene una predisposición natural para la adquisición del lenguaje pero, recientemente, se ha llamado la atención hacia la posibilidad de que la interacción social promueva de manera poderosa el aprendizaje de la lengua en el niño (Kuhl, 2007).…”