OLA7 NIRS

OLA7. Neuroimaging of newborn speech processing

Responsible: Judit Gervain

Members: Judit Gervain, Thierry Nazzi, Nawal Abboub, Camillia Bouchon, Silvia Benavides

Description

For a full understanding of language acquisition, the description of the initial state is fundamental. We propose a series of optical brain imaging studies (using near-infrared spectroscopy, NIRS) with newborn infants to explore the auditory and speech perception mechanisms present at birth, which could contribute to the acquisition of language during development. Previous studies using NIRS have established that language processing is left lateralized in the newborn brain just like in adults (Pena et al. 2003) and that newborns respond preferentially to repetitions and process repetition-based linguistic patterns in the left hemisphere (Gervain et al. 2008). One aim of our project is to uncover further perceptual biases and constraints in newborns. Specifically, we will investigate four perceptual principles.

First, we will test whether the iambic-trochaic grouping principle (predicting an iambic, i.e. prominence-final grouping for sound sequences that contrast in duration and a trochaic, i.e. prominence-initial grouping for pitch/intensity contrasts) is operational at birth. The presence of such a grouping principle would greatly facilitate infants' task when parsing speech into prosodically and syntactically meaningful units as natural languages use either iambic or trochaic prosodic groupings. Second, we will further explore newborns' ability to process repetition-based regularities. Previous results (Gervain et al. 2008) have established that syllable repetitions are perceptually privileged patterns for newborns. We now plan to explore whether this is specific to language or whether repetition of non-linguistic stimuli (e.g. piano tones) are also privileged. The third perceptual ability we will investigate is the encoding of sequential position. Using the repetition-detection paradigm, we will test whether newborns are able to encode the serial position of repetitions, at least in such highly salient positions as edges (sequence onsets and ends). Fourth, we intend to explore whether the division of labor observed between vowels and consonants in adult language processing (Nespor et al., 2003) is present at birth. Evidence from different lines of research ranging from language pathologies through language processing to language typology suggest that vowels are more informative about morphosyntax (e.g. vowel changes often indicate different morphological forms: sing - sang - sung - song), whereas consonants are selectively responsible for the encoding of lexical identity (e.g. consonantal roots in Semitic). We will use the repetition paradigm to test whether, as predicted, newborns process vowels and consonants differently, favoring rule extraction over the former and lexical identification over the latter category. Charting the perceptual mechanisms of the initial state will allow us to identify information and the related the learning mechanisms that infants use to bootstrap their native grammar and vocabulary.

Publications

(1) Cristia, A., Egorova, N., Gervain, J., Cabrol, D., Minagawa-Kawai, Y., Dupoux, E. in press. “Socially relevant language in the infant brain”. Developmental Science.

(2) Bouchon, C., Abboub, N., Gervain, J. 2013. “NIRS (Near Infrared Spectroscopy) : Principes généraux de cette nouvelle technique de neuroimagerie et contribution à la recherche aux origines du langage” Cahiers de l’Audition, 3: 7-15.

Other Productions

(1) Abboub, N., Nazzi, T., Gervain, J. 2013. “Perception of Rhythmic Grouping: an Optical Imaging Study”. Poster presented at SRCD 2013, 18-20 April 2013, Seattle, USA.

(2) Abboub, N., Nazzi, T., Gervain, J. 2012. “Perception of rhythmic grouping: An optical imaging study”. Poster presented at the Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference, 26-28 October 2012, London, UK.

(3) Abboub, N., Nazzi, T., Gervain, J. 2012. “Perception of rhythmic grouping: An optical imaging study”. Poster presented at the Cognitive Modules and Interfaces Workshop, 18-19 September 2012, Trieste, Italy.

(4) Bouchon, C., Nazzi, T., Gervain, J. 2013. “Vowels and Consonants at Birth: a NIRS study”. Poster presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development, 20-22 June 2013, Sab Sebastian, Spain.

(5) Bouchon, C., Gervain, J., Nazzi, T. 2012. “Vowels and Consonants at Birth: a NIRS study”. Poster presented at the Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference, 26-28 October 2012, London, UK.

(6) Bouchon, C., Gervain, J., Nazzi, T. 2012. “Vowels and Consonants at Birth: a NIRS study”. Poster presented at the Cognitive Modules and Interfaces Workshop, 18-19 September 2012, Trieste, Italy.