Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own-name recognition.

Recent evidence suggests that during the first year of life, a preference for consonant information during lexical processing (consonant bias) emerges, at least for some languages like French. Our study investigated the factors involved in this emergence as well as the developmental consequences for variation in consonant bias emergence. In a series of experiments, we measured 5-, 8-, and 11-month-old French-learning infants orientation times to a consonant or vowel mispronunciation of their own name, which is one of the few word forms familiar to infants at this young age. Both 5- and 8-month-olds oriented longer to vowel mispronunciations, but 11-month-olds showed a different pattern, initially orienting longer to consonant mispronunciations. We interpret these results as further evidence of an initial vowel bias, with consonant bias emergence by 11 months. Neither acoustic-phonetic nor lexical factors predicted preferences in 8- and 11-month-olds. Finally, counter to our predictions, a vowel bias at the time of test for 11-month-olds was related to later productive vocabulary outcomes.

Change in maternal speech rate to preverbal infants over the first two years of life.

Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother-infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with child language outcomes at two years, and contrasted outcomes in dyads displaying high/low rate profiles. Outcomes: Slower IDS rate at 7 months significantly correlated with vocabulary knowledge at two years. Slowed IDS may benefit child language learning even before children first speak.

Language nonselective lexical access in bilingual toddlers.

We examined how words from bilingual toddlers' second language (L2) primed recognition of related target words in their first language (L1). On critical trials, prime-target word pairs were either (a) phonologically related, with L2 primes overlapped phonologically with L1 target words [e.g., slide (L2 prime)-Kleid (L1 target, "dress")], or (b) phonologically related through translation, with L1 translations of L2 primes rhymed with the L1 target words [e.g., leg (L2 prime, L1 translation, "Bein")-Stein (L1 target, "stone"). Evidence of facilitated target recognition in the phonological priming condition suggests language nonselective access but not necessarily lexical access. However, a late interference effect on target recognition in the phonological priming through translation condition provides evidence for language nonselective lexical access: The L2 prime (leg) could influence L1 target recognition (Stein) in this condition only if both the L2 prime (leg) and its L1 translation ("Bein") were concurrently activated. In addition, age- and gender-matched monolingual toddler controls showed no difference between conditions, providing further evidence that the results with bilingual toddlers were driven by cross-language activation. The current study, therefore, presents the first-ever evidence of cross-talk between the two languages of bilinguals even as they begin to acquire fluency in their second language.

The development of infants' responses to mispronunciations: A meta-analysis.

As they develop into mature speakers of their native language, infants must not only learn words but also the sounds that make up those words. To do so, they must strike a balance between accepting speaker-dependent variation (e.g., mood, voice, accent) but appropriately rejecting variation when it (potentially) changes a word's meaning (e.g., cat vs. hat). This meta-analysis focuses on studies investigating infants' ability to detect mispronunciations in familiar words, or mispronunciation sensitivity. Our goal was to evaluate the development of infants' phonological representations for familiar words as well as explore the role of experimental manipulations related to theoretical questions and of analysis choices. The results show that although infants are sensitive to mispronunciations, they still accept these altered forms as labels for target objects. Interestingly, this ability is not modulated by age or vocabulary size, suggesting that a mature understanding of native language phonology may be present in infants from an early age, possibly before the vocabulary explosion. These results support several theoretical assumptions made in the literature, such as sensitivity to mispronunciation size and position of the mispronunciation. We also shed light on the impact of data analysis choices that may lead to different conclusions regarding the development of infants' mispronunciation sensitivity. Our article concludes with recommendations for improved practice in testing infants' word and sentence processing online. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Read my lips! Perception of speech in noise by preschool children with autism and the impact of watching the speaker's face.

BACKGROUND: Adults and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders show greater difficulties comprehending speech in the presence of noise. Moreover, while neurotypical adults use visual cues on the mouth to help them understand speech in background noise, differences in attention to human faces in autism may affect use of these visual cues. No work has yet examined these skills in toddlers with ASD, despite the fact that they are frequently faced with noisy, multitalker environments. METHODS: Children aged 2-5 years, both with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), saw pairs of images in a preferential looking study and were instructed to look at one of the two objects. Sentences were presented in the presence of quiet or another background talker (noise). On half of the trials, the face of the target person speaking was presented, while half had no face present. Growth-curve modeling was used to examine the time course of children's looking to the appropriate vs. opposite image. RESULTS: Noise impaired performance for both children with ASD and their age- and language-matched peers. When there was no face present on the screen, the effect of noise was generally similar across groups with and without ASD. But when the face was present, the noise had a more detrimental effect on children with ASD than their language-matched peers, suggesting neurotypical children were better able to use visual cues on the speaker's face to aid performance. Moreover, those children with ASD who attended more to the speaker's face showed better listening performance in the presence of noise. CONCLUSIONS: Young children both with and without ASD show poorer performance comprehending speech in the presence of another talker than in quiet. However, results suggest that neurotypical children may be better able to make use of face cues to partially counteract the effects of noise. Children with ASD varied in their use of face cues, but those children who spent more time attending to the face of the target speaker appeared less disadvantaged by the presence of background noise, indicating a potential path for future interventions.

Preschoolers' Word-Learning During Storybook Reading Interactions: Comparing Repeated and Elaborated Input.

Purpose Previous research shows that shared storybook reading interactions can function as effective speech and language interventions for young children, helping to improve a variety of skills-including word-learning. This study sought to investigate the potential benefits of elaboration of new words during a single storybook reading with preschoolers. Method Thirty-three typically developing children ages 35-37 months listened to a storybook containing novel words that were either repeated with a definition, repeated with no additional information, or only said once. Their receptive word-learning for these novel words was then evaluated via a preferential looking task. We analyzed children's correct looks to target pictures and compared looking behavior across the three levels of presentation. Results Results showed that preschoolers demonstrated successful receptive word-learning after a single storybook reading interaction with an adult when target words were repeated, either with or without elaboration. Within this context, elaboration was not required for preschoolers' receptive word-learning. Conclusions These results support the use of storybook reading with young children as a way to foster early receptive word-learning and highlight the importance of repeated exposure to novel material either with or without additional semantic information.

Co-activation of the L2 during L1 auditory processing: An ERP cross-modal priming study.

Several studies have shown that unbalanced bilinguals activate both of their languages simultaneously during L2 processing; however, evidence for L2 activation while participants are tested exclusively in their L1 has been more tenuous. Here, we investigate whether bilingual participants implicitly activate the label for a picture in their two languages, and whether labels activated in L2 can prime activation of cross-linguistically related L1 lexical targets. We tested highly proficient early Spanish-Basque bilinguals on an ERP cross-modal priming task conducted only in their L1, Spanish. Participants activated prime picture labels in both Spanish and Basque. More importantly, participants activated Basque translations of Spanish auditory targets, even in a Spanish experimental environment with no reference to Basque. Results provide strong evidence for non-selective bilingual lexical access, showing co-activation extending to lexical levels beyond phonological overlap. Our results add to the growing body of evidence for the interconnective nature of bilingual language activation.

The impact of cross-language phonological overlap on bilingual and monolingual toddlers' word recognition.

We examined how L2 exposure early in life modulates toddler word recognition by comparing German-English bilingual and German monolingual toddlers' recognition of words that overlapped to differing degrees, measured by number of phonological features changed, between English and German (e.g., identical, 1-feature change, 2-feature change, 3-feature change, no overlap). Recognition in English was modulated by language background (bilinguals vs. monolinguals) and by the amount of phonological overlap that English words shared with their L1 German translations. L1 word recognition remained unchanged across conditions between monolingual and bilingual toddlers, showing no effect of learning an L2 on L1 word recognition in bilingual toddlers. Furthermore, bilingual toddlers who had a later age of L2 acquisition had better recognition of words in English than those toddlers who acquired English at an earlier age. The results suggest an important role for L1 phonological experience on L2 word recognition in early bilingual word recognition.

A Meta-Analysis of Infants' Mispronunciation Sensitivity Development.

Before infants become mature speakers of their native language, they must acquire a robust word-recognition system which allows them to strike the balance between allowing some variation (mood, voice, accent) and recognizing variability that potentially changes meaning (e.g. cat vs hat). The current meta-analysis quantifies how the latter, termed mispronunciation sensitivity, changes over infants first three years, testing competing predictions of mainstream language acquisition theories. Our results show that infants were sensitive to mispronunciations, but accepted them as labels for target objects. Interestingly, and in contrast to predictions of mainstream theories, mispronunciation sensitivity was not modulated by infant age, suggesting that a sufficiently flexible understanding of native language phonology is in place at a young age.

Consonant and Vowel Processing in Word Form Segmentation: An Infant ERP Study.

Segmentation skill and the preferential processing of consonants (C-bias) develop during the second half of the first year of life and it has been proposed that these facilitate language acquisition. We used Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural bases of early word form segmentation, and of the early processing of onset consonants, medial vowels, and coda consonants, exploring how differences in these early skills might be related to later language outcomes. Our results with French-learning eight-month-old infants primarily support previous studies that found that the word familiarity effect in segmentation is developing from a positive to a negative polarity at this age. Although as a group infants exhibited an anterior-localized negative effect, inspection of individual results revealed that a majority of infants showed a negative-going response (Negative Responders), while a minority showed a positive-going response (Positive Responders). Furthermore, all infants demonstrated sensitivity to onset consonant mispronunciations, while Negative Responders demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to vowel mispronunciations, a developmental pattern similar to previous literature. Responses to coda consonant mispronunciations revealed neither sensitivity nor lack of sensitivity. We found that infants showing a more mature, negative response to newly segmented words compared to control words (evaluating segmentation skill) and mispronunciations (evaluating phonological processing) at test also had greater growth in word production over the second year of life than infants showing a more positive response. These results establish a relationship between early segmentation skills and phonological processing (not modulated by the type of mispronunciation) and later lexical skills.

Bilinguals implicitly name objects in both their languages: an ERP study.

Upon being presented with a familiar name-known image, monolingual infants and adults implicitly generate the image's label (Meyer et al., 2007; Mani and Plunkett, 2010, 2011; Mani et al., 2012a). Although the cross-linguistic influences on overt bilingual production are well studied (for a summary see Colomé and Miozzo, 2010), evidence that bilinguals implicitly generate the label for familiar objects in both languages remains mixed. For example, bilinguals implicitly generate picture labels in both of their languages, but only when tested in L2 and not L1 (Wu and Thierry, 2011) or when immersed in their L2 (Spivey and Marian, 1999; Marian and Spivey, 2003a,b) but not when immersed in their L1 (Weber and Cutler, 2004). The current study tests whether bilinguals implicitly generate picture labels in both of their languages when tested in their L1 with a cross-modal ERP priming paradigm. The results extend previous findings by showing that not just do bilinguals implicitly generate the labels for visually fixated images in both of their languages when immersed in their L1, but also that these implicitly generated labels in one language can prime recognition of subsequently presented auditory targets across languages (i.e., L2-L1). The current study provides support for cascaded models of lexical access during speech production, as well as a new priming paradigm for the study of bilingual language processing.