Prosodic processing at the sentence level in infants

We investigate whether 8-month-old infants can detect prosodic cues relevant in sentence structuring. We recorded event-related potentials to examine online responses to the processing of prosodic boundaries. Prior studies in adults have validated the closure positive shift as reflecting prosodic boundary perception during speech processing. The current study shows that in the event-related potentials of 8-month-olds, a closure positive shift is elicited in relation to the prosodic boundaries in speech, suggesting that these infants are able to structure speech input into prosodic units on a neurophysiological basis similar to that seen in adults. A delay in latency of the infant closure positive shift, however, suggests that children's exploitation of prosodic boundaries for the segmentation of the speech stream is still developing.

[1]  Ann Cutler,et al.  Prosody in the Comprehension of Spoken Language: A Literature Review , 1997, Language and speech.

[2]  O. Witte,et al.  Perception of phrase structure in music , 2005, Human brain mapping.

[3]  Angela D. Friederici,et al.  Neural Correlates of Syntactic Processing in Two-Year-Olds , 2005, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[4]  C. Reid,et al.  Parsing Complements: Comments on the Generality of the Principle of Minimal Attachment , 1989 .

[5]  Steven Pinker,et al.  Language learnability and language development , 1985 .

[6]  Eric Wanner,et al.  Language acquisition: the state of the art , 1982 .

[7]  A. Woodward,et al.  Perception of acoustic correlates of major phrasal units by young infants , 1992, Cognitive Psychology.

[8]  Elisabeth Selkirk,et al.  Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure , 1984 .

[9]  Angela D. Friederici,et al.  Brain potentials indicate immediate use of prosodic cues in natural speech processing , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[10]  William P. Fifer,et al.  Two-day-olds prefer their native language , 1993 .

[11]  H. Neville,et al.  Natural speech processing: An analysis using event-related brain potentials , 1991, Psychobiology.

[12]  J. Mehler,et al.  Phonological phrase boundaries constrain lexical access II. Infant data , 2004 .

[13]  Thierry Nazzi,et al.  DISCRIMINATION OF PITCH CONTOURS BY NEONATES , 1998 .

[14]  F. Ramus,et al.  Language discrimination by human newborns and by cotton-top tamarin monkeys. , 2000, Science.

[15]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Clauses are perceptual units for young infants , 1987, Cognition.

[16]  Joël Pynte,et al.  Prosodic Breaks and Attachment Decisions in Sentence Parsing. , 1996 .

[17]  S. Niimi,et al.  Elicitation of N400m in sentence comprehension due to lexical prosody incongruity , 2001, Neuroreport.

[18]  A. Friederici,et al.  Semantic sentence processing reflected in the event-related potentials of one- and two-year-old children , 2005, Neuroreport.

[19]  Angela D. Friederici,et al.  Prosody-driven Sentence Processing: An Event-related Brain Potential Study , 2005, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[20]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  A precursor of language acquisition in young infants , 1988, Cognition.