The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats

Toro, Juan M.; Trobalón, Josep Batista i; Sebastián‐Gallés, Núria

doi:10.1007/s10071-003-0172-0

Cited by 100 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…First, young infants seem to discriminate language differences or prosodic structures of languages by using general auditory mechanisms shared by other animals. Tamarin monkeys and rodents discriminate language differences and forward vs. backward speech as young infants do (Ramus et al, 2000;Toro et al, 2003). Second, in both NIRS and fMRI studies, activations observed during reversed speech were weak but they were also left-dominant.…”

Section: Developmental Neurobiologymentioning

confidence: 90%

Optical imaging of infants' neurocognitive development: Recent advances and perspectives

Minagawa‐Kawai

Mori

Hebden

et al. 2008

Developmental Neurobiology

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides a unique method of monitoring infant brain function by measuring the changes in the concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin. During the past 10 years, NIRS measurement of the developing brain has rapidly expanded. In this article, a brief discussion of the general principles of NIRS, including its technical advantages and limitations, is followed by a detailed review of the role played so far by NIRS in the study of infant perception and cognition, including language, and visual and auditory functions. Results have highlighted, in particular, the developmental changes of cerebral asymmetry associated with speech acquisition. Finally, suggestions for future studies of neurocognitive development using NIRS are presented. Although NIRS studies of the infant brain have yet to fulfill their potential, a review of the work done so far indicates that NIRS is likely to provide many unique insights in the field of developmental neuroscience.

show abstract

Section: Developmental Neurobiologymentioning

confidence: 90%

Optical imaging of infants' neurocognitive development: Recent advances and perspectives

Minagawa‐Kawai

Mori

Hebden

et al. 2008

Developmental Neurobiology

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, the effect disappeared when stimuli were played backward. These results have also been replicated with rats, using operant training methods as opposed to spontaneous techniques (Toro, Trobalon, & Sebastian-Galles, 2003, 2005.…”

Section: Artificial Language Learning (All)mentioning

confidence: 83%

Evolutionary Linguistics: A New Look at an Old Landscape

Hauser

Barner

O’Donnell

2007

Language Learning and Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the evolution of language, focusing on insights derived from observations and experiments in animals, guided by current theoretical problems that were inspired by the generative theory of grammar, and carried forward in substantial ways to the present by psycholinguists working on child language acquisition. We suggest that over the past few years, there has been a shift with respect to empirical studies of animals targeting questions of language evolution. In particular, rather than focus exclusively on the ways in which animals communicate, either naturally or by means of artificially acquired symbol systems, more recent work has focused on the underlying computational mechanisms subserving the language faculty and the ability of nonhuman animals to acquire these in some form. This shift in emphasis has brought biologists studying animals in closer contact with linguists studying the formal aspects of language, and has opened the door to a new line of empirical inquiry that we label evolingo.Here we review some of the exciting new findings in the evolingo area, focusing in particular on aspects of semantics and syntax.With respect to semantics, we suggest that some of the apparently distinctive and uniquely linguistic conceptual distinctions may have their origins in nonlinguistic conceptual representations; as one example, we present data on nonhuman primates and their capacity to represent a singular-plural distinction in the absence of language. With respect to syntax, we focus on both statistical and rule-based problems, especially the most recent attempts to explore different layers within the Chomsky hierarchy; here, we discuss work on tamarins and starlings, highlighting differences in the patterns of results as well as differences in methodology that speak to potential issues of learnability. We conclude by highlighting some of the exciting questions that lie ahead, as well as some of the methodological challenges that face both comparative and developmental studies of language evolution.

show abstract

“…There is, indeed, evidence that some songbirds are sensitive to variation in pitch, amplitude and song syllable duration in their natural song [11]. Also, some mammal and bird species show a sensitivity to the general prosodic patterns in human speech [12][13][14][15][16]. These findings suggest a similar sensitivity for prosodic cues in humans and nonhuman animals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Zebra finches are sensitive to prosodic features of human speech

Spierings

Cate

2014

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Variation in pitch, amplitude and rhythm adds crucial paralinguistic information to human speech. Such prosodic cues can reveal information about the meaning or emphasis of a sentence or the emotional state of the speaker. To examine the hypothesis that sensitivity to prosodic cues is language independent and not human specific, we tested prosody perception in a controlled experiment with zebra finches. Using a go/no-go procedure, subjects were trained to discriminate between speech syllables arranged in XYXY patterns with prosodic stress on the first syllable and XXYY patterns with prosodic stress on the final syllable. To systematically determine the salience of the various prosodic cues (pitch, duration and amplitude) to the zebra finches, they were subjected to five tests with different combinations of these cues. The zebra finches generalized the prosodic pattern to sequences that consisted of new syllables and used prosodic features over structural ones to discriminate between stimuli. This strong sensitivity to the prosodic pattern was maintained when only a single prosodic cue was available. The change in pitch was treated as more salient than changes in the other prosodic features. These results show that zebra finches are sensitive to the same prosodic cues known to affect human speech perception.

show abstract

The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats

Cited by 100 publications

References 13 publications

Optical imaging of infants' neurocognitive development: Recent advances and perspectives

Optical imaging of infants' neurocognitive development: Recent advances and perspectives

Evolutionary Linguistics: A New Look at an Old Landscape

Zebra finches are sensitive to prosodic features of human speech

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About