Effects of enriched auditory experience on infants’ speech perception during the first year of life

Abstract

Infants rapidly learn language in their home environments. Between 6 and 12 months of age, infants' ability to process the building blocks of speech (i.e., phonetic information) develops quickly, and this ability predicts later language development. Typically, developing infants in a monolingual language environment rapidly tune in to the phonetic information of their native language, while their sensitivity to nonnative phonetic information starts to decrease. Yet, enriched experience to a new language during this time significantly improves infants' sensitivity to the sound contrasts used in that language when compared to a control group without exposure to the new language. More recently, a new study examined another type of enriched auditory experience-musical experience-to determine its effect not only on music processing but also on phonetic processing. Results showed that a 1-month laboratory music intervention focusing on rhythm learning enhanced 9-month-old infants' neural processing not only for music but also for speech. Together, these results suggest that these enriched auditory experiences in infancy may improve infants' general auditory pattern-detection skills and their sensitivity to phonetic information.Keywords Infants Á Speech perception Á Language experience Á Music intervention Á Learning In many species, the young are particularly sensitive to environmental inputs at certain periods during development. The barn owl's ability to localize prey is calibrated by auditory-visual input during an early sensitive period in development; wearing prisms (or Prospects ( ) 46:235-247 DOI 10.1007 ear plugs) alters the mapping during this period (Knudsen 2002). Binocular fusion is dependent on binocular visual input during a critical period early in development; rearing cats with one occluded eye irreversibly alters binocular representation in the visual centers of the cortex (Hubel and Wiesel 1977;Shatz and Stryker 1978). In songbirds, learning their species-typical song depends on experience during a critical temporal window; presentation of conspecific song during that time is essential for normal development (Konishi 1985;Marler 1970). A recent theoretical paper (Werker and Hensch 2015) discusses the nature of the ''critical'' periods, especially the biological factors that ''open'' and ''close'' them. Here, we review work from our laboratory that focuses on one specific time period for human infants' learning; namely, the ''sensitive period'' for phonetic learning and the experiential factors that may influence this learning process. We first discuss the developmental trajectory of infants' abilities to discriminate native and nonnative phonetic contrasts between 6 and 12 months of age, and then several experiential factors we have observed in laboratory studies that influence infants' ability to discriminate speech sounds during this sensitive period. Lastly, we discuss future directions for research that will help elucidate the mechanisms through which these experiential factors exert t...

Structural Organization and Features of Speech and Music Perception in Language Functions’ Implementation with Timbre’s Perceptive Assessment

“…Based on these data, a method for diagnosing musical perception [30] and an effective music-therapeutic method of musical training have been developed, which can be used to improve interhemispheric interaction with respect to music and speech, other bilateral cognitive functions (for example, teaching mathematics), as well as for correction hearing disorders. In general, the positive impact of music training, music education and musical experience on the formation, development and restoration of speech function is shown both in the conditions of early development of a child [116] and in the development of tonal languages [1,21,26,27,40,59,60,88,114]. The results of several recent studies of the musical deficit, pitch-amusia (i.e.…”

Language experience during the sensitive period narrows infants’ sensory encoding of lexical tones—Music intervention reverses it

“…A second characteristic of the sensitive period is the high malleability of its outcome, which has been demonstrated by interventions that provide infants with additional auditory experience ( Kuhl et al, 2003 ; Zhao and Kuhl, 2017 ). In the seminal study, 9-month-old monolingual English-learning infants were randomly assigned to participate in 12 sessions of laboratory-controlled, live and highly interactive, exposure sessions with a foreign language speaker (Mandarin) vs. 12 sessions in English.…”