Sex hormone testosterone affects language organization in the infant brain

Friederici, Angela D.; Pannekamp, Ann; Partsch, Carl-Joachim; Ulmen, Ulrike; Oehler, Klaus; Schmutzler, Renate; Hesse, V.

doi:10.1097/wnr.0b013e3282f5105a

Cited by 67 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In the light of these findings, it is not surprising that the polarities of the pitch MMR and the rule MMR differ across sexes. The observed differences between boys and girls could be mediated by the hormone testosterone, which has been found to negatively impact phonological discrimination abilities in 1-mo-olds (32) and are in line with evidence showing that girls outperform boys in remote dependency learning at later developmental stages (i.e., at 12 mo) (18) and in general verbal abilities during childhood (26,34).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…With respect to our data, this finding would imply that boys' rule learning is indicated by an enhanced neural response to the nonpredicted syllable at a precognitive level, but girls' rule learning takes place at a more cognitive, memory-based level. Regardless of the nature of the underlying neural mechanisms, developmental differences in the polarity of the MMR across sound features have been observed previously (23), and so have sex differences in early sound discrimination (32). In the light of these findings, it is not surprising that the polarities of the pitch MMR and the rule MMR differ across sexes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

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Auditory perception at the root of language learning

Mueller

Friederici

Männel

2012

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

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127

182

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Learning a spoken language presupposes efficient auditory functions. In the present event-related potential study, we tested whether and how basic auditory processes are related to online learning of a linguistic rule in infants and adults. Participants listened to frequent standard stimuli, which were interspersed with infrequent pitch deviants and rule deviants, violating a nonadjacent dependency between two syllables. Only infants who showed the more mature mismatch response for the pitch deviants (i.e., a negativity) showed a mismatch response to the rule deviants. Concordantly, the small group of adults who showed evidence of rule learning showed larger mismatch effects for pitch processing. We conclude that the ability to extract linguistic rules develops in early infancy and is tightly linked to functional aspects of basic auditory mechanisms.language acquisition | AXB rules | pitch perception | mismatch negativity H uman language is based on an acoustically transmitted signal. The successful language learner needs to decode the linguistic content of a complex auditory signal into its component units and their relation to each other, thus deriving words and rules. Although sufficient speech input is widely considered to be crucial for language learning, the perceptual abilities that form the gateway to spoken language have long been neglected in first and second language acquisition research. Basic auditory perception may, however, be an important determinant of language learning processes across the range of normal and abnormal development.There is empirical evidence supporting the idea that early auditory abilities impact on later outcomes of language development in normal infants and populations with language-related disorders (1-3). Furthermore, auditory brainstem responses in language-impaired children suggest that low-level auditory processes contribute to the pathogenesis of language disorders (4). In adults, individual differences in perceptual abilities correlate with language-processing abilities in their native and a second language (5, 6). The findings suggest a potential causal relationship between basic auditory processing ability and the efficiency of language learning in infancy and adulthood.Although infants do not produce complex language in their first year of life, they show remarkable abilities to extract regular patterns from speech input early on. Eight-month-old infants, and even newborns, have been shown to be sensitive to transitional probabilities between syllables defining word-like units (7,8). Syllable repetitions can be detected from birth (9) and dependencies between nonadjacent units of speech can be detected as early as 4 mo of age (10). Learners seem to be able to exploit various distributional and acoustic cues to detect words and rules in speech input. Infants, for example, take advantage of prosodic cues for detecting possible words in the linguistic input (11). Similarly, prosodic cues seem to assist adults' extraction of grammatical patterns from speech input (12, 1...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Auditory perception at the root of language learning

Mueller

Friederici

Männel

2012

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

Self Cite

127

182

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“…Zambrana et al (2012) demonstrated that girls between the ages of 1 year 6 months and 3 years have a significantly higher level of language comprehension than do boys. Another longitudinal study of newborn children showed that girls respond better to verbal stimuli and have better eye contact than boys (Friederici et al 2008;Leeb and Rejskind 2004;Olafsen et al 2006). Eidevald (2009) found that girls attending kindergarten are more linguistically developed than boys.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research in other areas that may shed light on such a potential connection has been documented in several longitudinal studies in the fields of languages, motivation, mathematics and self-regulation (Friederici et al 2008;Meece and Painter 2008;Silverman 2003;Zambrana et al 2012). These studies demonstrated differences favouring girls.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…These studies demonstrated differences favouring girls. Research into children's language development has shown that newborn girls make better eye contact, are more able to discriminate, and pay greater attention to verbal stimuli (Friederici et al 2008;Leeb and Rejskind 2004). Compared with boys, girls between 1 year 6 months and 3 years of age display a significantly higher level of language comprehension (Zambrana et al 2012).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Toddlers Master Everyday Activities in Kindergarten: A Gender Perspective

Meland

Kaltvedt

Reikerås

2015

Early Childhood Educ J

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This article discusses how 2-year olds cope with various everyday activities as observed by kindergarten staff from a gender perspective. Everyday activities are part of the daily pedagogical life in a kindergarten and are linked to situations such as meals, dressing and undressing, grooming and potty/toilet training. Data were collected through structured observation of 535 boys and 509 girls. The children, aged between 30 and 33 months, were observed over a 3-month period. The observation guideline material ''Alle Med'' (''Everyone Included'') was used to assess how children master everyday activities. The result reveals gender differences favouring the girls. In the present article, this result will be analysed against a backdrop of gender-related theory.

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