Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants

Saffran, Jenny R.; Aslin, Richard Ν.; Newport, Elissa L.

doi:10.1126/science.274.5294.1926

Cited by 4,472 publications

(4,225 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…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).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

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

2005

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An intervention facilitated 3-month-old infants' apprehension of objects either prior to (reach first), or after (watch first) viewing another person grasp similar objects in a visual habituation procedure. Action experience facilitated action perception: reach-first infants focused on the relation between the actor and her goal, but watch-first infants did not. Infants' sensitivity to the actor's goal was correlated with their engagement in object-directed contact with the toys. These findings indicate that infants can rapidly form goal-based action representations and suggest a developmental link between infants' goal directed actions and their ability to detect goals in the actions of others.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

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

2005

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“…Over the past 10 years, developmental scientists have investigated the problem of segmentation in NH infants and the role of various types of linguistic cues to segmentation such as rhythmic [27,28], statistical/distributional [29][30][31], coarticulatory [32], phonotactic [33,34], and allophonic [35]. Some of these cues, such as statistical/distributional and coarticulatory information may be similar across languages, while others vary substantially from language to language.…”

Section: Segmentation Of Words From Fluent Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech perception skills of deaf infants following cochlear implantation: a first report

Houston

Pisoni

Kirk

et al. 2003

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology

105

116

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SummaryObjective-We adapted a behavioral procedure that has been used extensively with normalhearing (NH) infants, the visual habituation (VH) procedure, to assess deaf infants' discrimination and attention to speech.Methods-Twenty-four NH 6-month-olds, 24 NH 9-month-olds, and 16 deaf infants at various ages before and following cochlear implantation (CI) were tested in a sound booth on their caregiver's lap in front of a TV monitor. During the habituation phase, each infant was presented with a repeating speech sound (e.g. 'hop hop hop') paired with a visual display of a checkerboard pattern on half of the trials ('sound trials') and only the visual display on the other half ('silent trials'). When the infant's looking time decreased and reached a habituation criterion, a test phase began. This consisted of two trials: an 'old trial' that was identical to the 'sound trials' and a 'novel trial' that consisted of a different repeating speech sound (e.g. 'ahhh') paired with the same checkerboard pattern.Results-During the habituation phase, NH infants looked significantly longer during the sound trials than during the silent trials. However, deaf infants who had received cochlear implants (CIs) displayed a much weaker preference for the sound trials. On the other hand, both NH infants and deaf infants with CIs attended significantly longer to the visual display during the novel trial than during the old trial, suggesting that they were able to discriminate the speech patterns. Before receiving CIs, deaf infants did not show any preferences.Conclusions-Taken together, the findings suggest that deaf infants who receive CIs are able to detect and discriminate some speech patterns. However, their overall attention to speech sounds may be less than NH infants'. Attention to speech may impact other aspects of speech perception and spoken language development, such as segmenting words from fluent speech and learning novel words. Implications of the effects of early auditory deprivation and age at CI on speech perception and language development are discussed.

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“…The sensitivity to phonotactic probability emerges during the first year of life, most likely between 6 and 9 months of age (Jusczyk, 1999). Infants may use statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds to infer which sounds can be combined to form words, and how to segment these words from fluent speech (Saffran et al, 1996). During subsequent language development in children, high phonotactic probability leads to a faster acquisition of words (Storkel, 2001), a better recall of non-words (Gathercole et al, 1999) and a higher accuracy of non-word repetition (Coady and Aslin, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory cortical tuning to statistical regularities in phonology

Bonte

Mitterer

Zellagui

et al. 2005

Clinical Neurophysiology

124

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Objective: Ample behavioral evidence suggests that distributional properties of the language environment influence the processing of speech. Yet, how these characteristics are reflected in neural processes remains largely unknown. The present ERP study investigates neurophysiological correlates of phonotactic probability: the distributional frequency of phoneme combinations. Methods: We employed an ERP measure indicative of experience-dependent auditory memory traces, the mismatch negativity (MMN). We presented pairs of non-words that differed by the degree of phonotactic probability in a modified passive oddball design that minimizes the contribution of acoustic processes. Results: In Experiment 1 the non-word with high phonotactic probability (notsel) elicited a significantly enhanced MMN as compared to the non-word with low phonotactic probability (notkel). In Experiment 2 this finding was replicated with a non-word pair with a smaller acoustic difference (notsel-notfel). An MMN enhancement was not observed in a third acoustic control experiment with stimuli having comparable phonotactic probability (so-fo). Conclusions: Our data suggest that auditory cortical responses to phoneme clusters are modulated by statistical regularities of phoneme combinations. Significance: This study indicates that the language environment is relevant in shaping the neural processing of speech. Furthermore, it provides a potentially useful design for investigating implicit phonological processing in children with anomalous language functions like dyslexia.

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Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants

Cited by 4,472 publications

References 12 publications

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

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

Speech perception skills of deaf infants following cochlear implantation: a first report

Auditory cortical tuning to statistical regularities in phonology

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