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- Title
Neural Attunement Processes in Infants during the Acquisition of a Language-Specific Phonemic Contrast.
- Authors
Minagawa-Kawai, Yasuyo; Mori, Koichi; Naoi, Nozomi; Kojima, Shozo
- Abstract
To elucidate the developmental neural attunement process in the language-specific phonemic repertoire, cerebral hemodynamic responses to a Japanese durational vowel contrast were measured in Japanese infants using near-infrared spectroscopy. Because only relative durational information distinguishes this particular vowel contrast, both first and second language learners have difficulties in acquiring this phonemically crucial durational difference. Previous cross-linguistic studies conducted on adults showed that phoneme-specific, left-dominant neural responses were observed only for native Japanese listeners. Using the same stimuli, we show that a larger response to the across-category changes than to the within-category changes occurred transiently in the 6- to 7-month-old group before stabilizing in the groups older than 12 months. However, the left dominance of the phoneme-specific response in the auditory area was observed only in the groups of 13 months and above. Thus, the durational phonemic contrast is most likely processed first by a generic auditory circuit at 6-7 months as a result of early auditory experience. The neural processing of the contrast is then switched over to a more linguistic circuit after 12 months, this time with a left dominance similar to native adult listeners.
- Subjects
DEVELOPMENTAL neurobiology; PHONEMICS; JAPANESE language; VOWELS; INFANT development; NEAR infrared spectroscopy; AUDITORY perception; NEUROLINGUISTICS
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2007, Vol 27, Issue 2, p17
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1984-06.2007