The Infant's Auditory World: Hearing, Speech, and the Beginnings of Language

Saffran, Jenny R.; Werker, Janet F.; Werner, Lynne A.

doi:10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0202

Cited by 124 publications

(125 citation statements)

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“…Thus, long-term experience with actively parsing out the melody may fine-tune the brainstem representation of the upper tones of musical intervals. Our results also underscore the role that long-term experience plays in shaping basic auditory encoding and the link between sensory function and repeated exposure to behaviorally relevant signals (Saffran, 2003;Saffran et al, 2006). This tuning of the subcortical auditory system is likely mediated by the corticofugal pathway, a vast track of descending efferent fibers that connect the cortex and lower structures (Suga et al, 2002;Winer, 2005;Kral and Eggermont, 2007;Luo et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Selective Subcortical Enhancement of Musical Intervals in Musicians

Skoe²,

et al. 2009

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By measuring the auditory brainstem response to two musical intervals, the major sixth (E3 and G2) and the minor seventh (E3 and F#2), we found that musicians have a more specialized sensory system for processing behaviorally relevant aspects of sound. Musicians had heightened responses to the harmonics of the upper tone (E), as well as certain combination tones (sum tones) generated by nonlinear processing in the auditory system. In music, the upper note is typically carried by the upper voice, and the enhancement of the upper tone likely reflects musicians' extensive experience attending to the upper voice. Neural phase locking to the temporal periodicity of the amplitude-modulated envelope, which underlies the perception of musical harmony, was also more precise in musicians than nonmusicians. Neural enhancements were strongly correlated with years of musical training, and our findings, therefore, underscore the role that long-term experience with music plays in shaping auditory sensory encoding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Selective Subcortical Enhancement of Musical Intervals in Musicians

Skoe²,

et al. 2009

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“…Addressing the nature of sociolinguistic variables generally, Labov came to understand variables as showing a statistically reckoned character where participants can show a sensitivity to small deviations from a norm reckoned over a short number of exemplars in interaction (Labov, 1972). Such statistically based reckoning is also apparent in such phenomena as phonological and linguistic accommodation (Babel, 2009;Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991) and in statistical learning theories of child language acquisition (for reviews see Romberg & Saffran, 2010;Saffran, Werker, & Werner, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marked Initial Pitch in Questions Signals Marked Communicative Function

Sicoli

Stivers²,

Enfield

et al. 2014

Lang Speech

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In conversation, the initial pitch of an utterance can provide an early phonetic cue of the communicative function, the speech act, or the social action being implemented. We conducted quantitative acoustic measurements and statistical analyses of pitch in over 10,000 utterances, including 2512 questions, their responses, and about 5000 other utterances by 180 total speakers from a corpus of 70 natural conversations in 10 languages. We measured pitch at first prominence in a speaker's utterance and discriminated utterances by language, speaker, gender, question form, and what social action is achieved by the speaker's turn. Through applying multivariate logistic regression we found that initial pitch that significantly deviated from the speaker's median pitch level was predictive of the social action of the question. In questions designed to solicit agreement with an evaluation rather than information, pitch was divergent from a speaker's median predictably in the top 10% of a speakers range. This latter finding reveals a kind of iconicity in the relationship between prosody and social action in which a marked pitch correlates with a marked social action. Thus, we argue that speakers rely on pitch to provide an early signal for recipients that the question is not to be interpreted through its literal semantics but rather through an inference.

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“…Humans' capacity for language provoked classic debates on nature versus nurture by equally strong proponents of nativism (Chomsky 1959) and learning (Skinner 1957). Although we are far beyond those debates and now informed by a great deal of data about infants, their innate predispositions, and their incredible abilities to learn once exposed to natural language (Saffran et al 2006;Kuhl 2010Kuhl , 2011, we are only beginning to posit the mechanisms in the brain and mind of a child that enable language acquisition (e.g., Kuhl et al 2014).In this paper, I advance a new hypothesis-that in the earliest phases of language acquisition, infants combine a powerful set of domain-general computational skills with their equally extraordinary social skills to "crack" the speech code. Furthermore, I hypothesize that the social brain-in ways we have yet to understand-"gates" the computational mechanisms underlying learning in the domain of language.…”

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Early Language Learning and the Social Brain

Kuhl

2014

Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol

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Explaining how every typically developing child acquires language is one of the grand challenges of cognitive neuroscience. Historically, language learning provoked classic debates about the contributions of innately specialized as opposed to general learning mechanisms. Now, new data are being brought to bear from studies that employ magnetoencephalograph (MEG), electroencephalograph (EEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies on young children. These studies examine the patterns of association between brain and behavioral measures. The resulting data offer both expected results and surprises that are altering theory. As we uncover what it means to be human through the lens of young children, and their ability to speak, what we learn will not only inform theories of human development, but also lead to the discovery of neural biomarkers, early in life, that indicate risk for language impairment and allow early intervention for children with developmental disabilities involving language.The earliest phases of language acquisition invoke a special fascination because they allow us to examine humans' extraordinary abilities to acquire what is arguably our most unique skill-the ability to speak. Humans' capacity for language provoked classic debates on nature versus nurture by equally strong proponents of nativism (Chomsky 1959) and learning (Skinner 1957). Although we are far beyond those debates and now informed by a great deal of data about infants, their innate predispositions, and their incredible abilities to learn once exposed to natural language (Saffran et al. 2006;Kuhl 2010Kuhl , 2011, we are only beginning to posit the mechanisms in the brain and mind of a child that enable language acquisition (e.g., Kuhl et al. 2014).In this paper, I advance a new hypothesis-that in the earliest phases of language acquisition, infants combine a powerful set of domain-general computational skills with their equally extraordinary social skills to "crack" the speech code. Furthermore, I hypothesize that the social brain-in ways we have yet to understand-"gates" the computational mechanisms underlying learning in the domain of language. My goal here isto discuss recent results that advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the social influences on language learning in infants.The assertion that social factors gate language learning, I argue, explains not only how typically developing children acquire language, but also why children with autism exhibit twin deficits in social cognition and language, and why nonhuman animals with impressive computational abilities do not acquire language. Moreover, the gating hypothesis may explain why social factors play a far more significant role than previously realized in human learning beyond language and throughout our lifetimes (Meltzoff et al. 2009).Using methods of systems neuroscience tailored for use with very young children, we can now explore how the integration of information across specialized brain systems such as language ...

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The Infant's Auditory World: Hearing, Speech, and the Beginnings of Language

Cited by 124 publications

References 471 publications

Selective Subcortical Enhancement of Musical Intervals in Musicians

Selective Subcortical Enhancement of Musical Intervals in Musicians

Marked Initial Pitch in Questions Signals Marked Communicative Function

Early Language Learning and the Social Brain

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