Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning

Abstract

Infants acquire language with remarkable speed, although little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the acquisition process. Studies of the phonetic units of language have shown that early in life, infants are capable of discerning differences among the phonetic units of all languages, including native-and foreignlanguage sounds. Between 6 and 12 mo of age, the ability to discriminate foreign-language phonetic units sharply declines. In two studies, we investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions for reversing this decline in foreign-language phonetic perception. In Experiment 1, 9-mo-old American infants were exposed to native Mandarin Chinese speakers in 12 laboratory sessions. A control group also participated in 12 language sessions but heard only English. Subsequent tests of Mandarin speech perception demonstrated that exposure to Mandarin reversed the decline seen in the English control group. In Experiment 2, infants were exposed to the same foreign-language speakers and materials via audiovisual or audio-only recordings. The results demonstrated that exposure to recorded Mandarin, without interpersonal interaction, had no effect. Between 9 and 10 mo of age, infants show phonetic learning from live, but not prerecorded, exposure to a foreign language, suggesting a learning process that does not require long-term listening and is enhanced by social interaction.

Action experience alters 3-month-old infants' perception of others' actions

“…We suggest that such findings reflect infants' ability to detect the goal structure of action following several minutes of intervention experience engaging in object-directed behavior, and to subsequently apply this knowledge to their perception of the actions of others. Thus, our findings add to the body of literature on rapid learning in young infants (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996;Marcus, Vijayan, Bandi Rao, & Vishton, 1999;Kuhl, Tsao, & Liue, 2003), provide empirical support for the role of active experience in learning (Piaget, 1953), and add to the growing record documenting relations between agentive experience and other aspects of cognitive development in infancy (Needham et al, 2002;Eppler, 1995;Needham, 1999).…”

Perceived live interaction modulates the developing social brain

“…Behavioral evidence, however, from both adults (e.g. Okita et al, 2007;Laidlaw et al, 2011) and children (Kuhl et al, 2003;Goldstein and Schwade, 2008;Kirschner and Tomasello, 2009) suggests that live, interactive context significantly alters response to otherwise matched social stimuli. Adult neuroimaging research has begun to identify the neural bases of social interaction (e.g.…”

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

“…During this time, laboratory experiments indicate that distributional and statistical learning can occur with just two minutes' exposure to novel speech material (e.g., Maye, Werker, and Gerken 2002;Saffran, Aslin, and Newport 1996). However, studies have also shown strong social influences in their investigations of whether infants are capable of phonetic learning at 9 months of age from natural first-time exposure to a foreign language (Conboy and Kuhl 2011;Kuhl, Tsao, and Liu 2003). Kuhl and colleagues (Kuhl, Tsao, and Liu 2003), in a foreign-language intervention experiment, exposed 9-month-old infants to Mandarin Chinese, a language with prosodic and phonetic structure very different from English.…”

“…The ability to accurately and efficiently process complex speech sounds is critical in language development as speech processing in infants can Following this growing literature, we examined the rich experience of music training in an even earlier developmental stage (9 months of age) for both theoretical and methodological reasons (Zhao and Kuhl 2016). Theoretically, this approach allowed us to compare the effects of music experience during the sensitive period of phonetic learning to other previously studied experiences, such as experience of a foreign language (Kuhl, Tsao, and Liu 2003). Methodologically, (1) we were able to randomly assign infants at this age to complete either a structured laboratory-controlled music intervention (Intervention) or control activities (Control).…”