Language and the Newborn Brain: Does Prenatal Language Experience Shape the Neonate Neural Response to Speech?

May, Lillian; Byers‐Heinlein, Krista; Gervain, Judit; Werker, Janet F.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00222

Cited by 146 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…ICs and ILs were retrieved from Oxford Vocal (OxVoc) Sounds (136) and public online databases. IBs, which can have characteristic sounds of the native language (137)(138)(139), were collected from native Chinese infants. ICs, ILs, and IBs came from children in the first year of life.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry

Bornstein

Putnick

Rigo

et al. 2017

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

153

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This report coordinates assessments of five types of behavioral responses in new mothers to their own infants' cries with neurobiological responses in new mothers to their own infants' cries and in experienced mothers and inexperienced nonmothers to infant cries and other emotional and control sounds. We found that 684 new primipara mothers in 11 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) preferentially responded to their infants' vocalizing distress by picking up and holding and by talking to their infants, as opposed to displaying affection, distracting, or nurturing. Complementary functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses of brain responses to their own infants' cries in 43 new primipara US mothers revealed enhanced activity in concordant brain territories linked to the intention to move and to speak, to process auditory stimulation, and to caregive [supplementary motor area (SMA), inferior frontal regions, superior temporal regions, midbrain, and striatum]. Further, fMRI brain responses to infant cries in 50 Chinese and Italian mothers replicated, extended, and, through parcellation, refined the results. Brains of inexperienced nonmothers activated differently. Culturally common responses to own infant cry coupled with corresponding fMRI findings to own infant and to generic infant cries identified specific, common, and automatic caregiving reactions in mothers to infant vocal expressions of distress and point to their putative neurobiological bases. Candidate behaviors embedded in the nervous systems of human caregivers lie at the intersection of evolutionary biology and developmental cultural psychology.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry

Bornstein

Putnick

Rigo

et al. 2017

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

153

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…At birth, infants possess an initial preparedness for language and a developmental readiness that supports learning any of the world's languages (1)(2)(3), yet also already show privileged processing to the native language from prenatal listening experience (4)(5)(6). During the following weeks and months of life, infants become progressively attuned to the properties of their native language, including its rhythmical and segmental (e.g., consonant) information (reviewed in refs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and depressed maternal mood alter trajectory of infant speech perception

Weikum

Oberlander

Hensch

et al. 2012

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

Self Cite

172

107

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Language acquisition reflects a complex interplay between biology and early experience. Psychotropic medication exposure has been shown to alter neural plasticity and shift sensitive periods in perceptual development. Notably, serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) are antidepressant agents increasingly prescribed to manage antenatal mood disorders, and depressed maternal mood per se during pregnancy impacts infant behavior, also raising concerns about long-term consequences following such developmental exposure. We studied whether infants' language development is altered by prenatal exposure to SRIs and whether such effects differ from exposure to maternal mood disturbances. Infants from non-SRI-treated mothers with little or no depression (control), depressed but non-SRI-treated (depressed-only), and depressed and treated with an SRI (SRI-exposed) were studied at 36 wk gestation (while still in utero) on a consonant and vowel discrimination task and at 6 and 10 mo of age on a nonnative speech and visual language discrimination task. Whereas the control infants responded as expected (success at 6 mo and failure at 10 mo) the SRI-exposed infants failed to discriminate the language differences at either age and the depressed-only infants succeeded at 10 mo instead of 6 mo. Fetuses at 36 wk gestation in the control condition performed as expected, with a response on vowel but not consonant discrimination, whereas the SRI-exposed fetuses showed accelerated perceptual development by discriminating both vowels and consonants. Thus, prenatal depressed maternal mood and SRI exposure were found to shift developmental milestones bidirectionally on infant speech perception tasks.L anguage, our most quintessential human characteristic, involves a complex interplay between biology and experience. At birth, infants possess an initial preparedness for language and a developmental readiness that supports learning any of the world's languages (1-3), yet also already show privileged processing to the native language from prenatal listening experience (4-6). During the following weeks and months of life, infants become progressively attuned to the properties of their native language, including its rhythmical and segmental (e.g., consonant) information (reviewed in refs. 7 and 8). The high degree of regularity in the timing of sequential tuning to properties of the native language suggests a series of critical or sensitive periods, i.e., points in development when the system is maximally influenced by input.The timing of onset of these sensitive periods seems to be maturationally constrained. Infants born 3 mo preterm attune to the phonetic properties (9) of their native language at the same gestational age as full-term infants, not according to the number of months of postnatal listening experience. Such maturational constraints can protect development: ensuring the optimal consecutive stabilization of the perceptual components that contribute in a step-wise fashion to language acquisition (10). However, it is known from research i...

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“…According to other study, the prenatal experience with the mother tongue affects the way the newborn's brain respond to language all over their cerebral regions responsive to the speech processing 6 , especially those areas related to memorization ability 7 . The human brain is, therefore, committed to the properties of mother tongue.…”

Section: Review Of Literaturementioning

confidence: 98%

Estratégias de percepção da língua materna: do nascimento até um ano de vida

et al. 2016

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Very young babies show very refined language skills being able to perceive many features in adult speech. The perception of the mother tongue is essential to language acquisition. This literature review deals with speech perception skills from children under one year of age. Therefore a literature search was performed in 7 databases, in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, in the period of [2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009][2010][2011][2012][2013][2014]. With this bibliographic research was possible to recognize how language acquisition occurs quickly, and that very young infants are able to use elaborate strategies to initiate such acquisition. Keywords: Child Development; Infant; Cognition; Speech Perception RESUMO Bebês muito jovens demonstram habilidades linguísticas bastante refinadas, sendo capazes de perceber várias características na fala do adulto. A percepção da língua materna é, pois, imprescindível para a aquisição da linguagem. Esta revisão de literatura trata das habilidades de percepção de fala dos bebês a partir do nascimento até um ano de idade. Para tanto, foi realizada a busca bibliográfica em 7 bases de dados, nos idiomas inglês, francês, português e espanhol, no período de 2007 a 2014. Com esse levantamento bibliográfico foi possível reconhecer como a aquisição da linguagem ocorre de forma rápida e que bebês bem jovens são capazes de utilizar estratégias elaboradas para iniciar tal aquisição.

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Language and the Newborn Brain: Does Prenatal Language Experience Shape the Neonate Neural Response to Speech?

Cited by 146 publications

References 41 publications

Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry

Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry

Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and depressed maternal mood alter trajectory of infant speech perception

Estratégias de percepção da língua materna: do nascimento até um ano de vida

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