The Relationship Between Infants’ Production Experience and Their Processing of Speech

The early relationship between children's emerging articulatory abilities and their capacity to process speech input was investigated, following recent studies with English-learning infants. Twenty-six monolingual Italian-learning infants were tested at 6 months (no consistent and stable use of consonants, or vocal motor schemes [VMS]) and at the age at which they displayed use of at least one VMS. Perceptual testing was based on lists of nonwords containing one of three categories of sounds each: produced by infant (own VMS), not yet produced but typical of that age (other VMS), or not typically produced by infants at that age (non-VMS). In addition, size of expressive lexicon at 12 months and 18 months was assessed using an Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). The results confirmed a relation between infant preverbal production and attentional response to VMS and also between age at first VMS and 12-month vocabulary. Maternal input is shown not to be a specific determinant of individual infant production preferences. A comparison between the English and Italian experimental findings shows a stronger attentional response to VMS in isolated words as compared to sentences. These results confirm the existence of an interaction between perception and production that helps to shape the way that language develops.

[1]  J. MacQueen.  Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations , 1967 .

[2]  A M Liberman,et al.  Perception of the speech code. , 1967, Psychological review.

[3]  P. D. Eimas,et al.  Speech Perception in Infants , 1971, Science.

[4]  C. A. Ferguson,et al.  WORDS AND SOUNDS IN EARLY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION , 1975 .

[5]  K. Bloom.  Social elicitation of infant vocal behavior. , 1975, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[6]  D. Oller,et al.  Infant babbling and speech , 1976, Journal of Child Language.

[7]  Marlys A. Macken,et al.  Chapter 8 – RETRACTED: ASPECTS OF THE ACQUISITION OF STOP SYSTEMS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE , 1980 .

[8]  E. Veneziano.  Early language and nonverbal representation: a reassessment , 1981, Journal of Child Language.

[9]  J. Werker,et al.  Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life , 1984 .

[10]  A. Liberman,et al.  The motor theory of speech perception revised , 1985, Cognition.

[11]  C. Stoel-Gammon,et al.  Phonetic inventories, 15-24 months: a longitudinal study. , 1985, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[12]  K. Bloom,et al.  Turn taking affects the quality of infant vocalizations , 1987, Journal of Child Language.

[13]  Carol Stoel-Gammon,et al.  Prespeech and early speech development of two late talkers , 1989 .

[14]  R. Paul,et al.  Phonological behavior in toddlers with slow expressive language development. , 1992, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[15]  P. Jusczyk.  From general to language-specific capacities: the WRAPSA Model of how speech perception develops , 1993 .

[16]  M. Vihman.  Variable paths to early word production , 1993 .

[17]  C. Best.  The emergence of native-language phonological influences in infants: A perceptual assimilation model. , 1994 .

[18]  B. D. Boysson-Bardies,et al.  External Sources of Individual Differences? A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of the Phonetics of Mothers' Speech to 1-Year-Old Children. , 1994 .

[19]  R. Fox.  Modularity and the Motor Theory of Speech Perception , 1994 .

[20]  P. MacNeilage,et al.  The articulatory basis of babbling. , 1995, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[21]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. , 2007, Journal of cognitive neuroscience.

[22]  C. Best.  A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception , 1995 .

[23]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  The head-turn preference procedure for testing auditory perception , 1995 .

[24]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. , 1996, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[25]  E Thelen,et al.  Development of reaching during the first year: role of movement speed. , 1996, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[26]  L. Squire,et al.  Structure and function of declarative and nondeclarative memory systems. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[27]  Marilyn M. Vihman,et al.  Phonological Development , 2014 .

[28]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  Infant vocalizations in response to speech: vocal imitation and developmental change. , 1996, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[29]  J. Pind.  The Discovery of Spoken Language, Peter W. Jusczyk (Ed.). MIT Press (1997), ISBN 0 262 10058 4 , 1997 .

[30]  R S Chapman,et al.  Children's language learning: an interactionist perspective. , 2000, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[31]  Peter F. MacNeilage,et al.  An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception , 2000, Phonetica.

[32]  Björn Lindblom,et al.  Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns , 2000, Phonetica.

[33]  Marilyn M. Vihman,et al.  The Construction of a First Phonology , 2000, Phonetica.

[34]  A. Liberman,et al.  On the relation of speech to language , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[35]  Remo Job,et al.  Le sillabe PD/DPSS. Una base di dati sulla frequenza sillabica dell'italiano scritto , 2001 .

[36]  J. Locke,et al.  First Communion: The Emergence of Vocal Relationships , 2001 .

[37]  M. Vihman,et al.  Early phonetic and lexical development: a productivity approach. , 2001, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[38]  Janet F. Werker,et al.  Cross-Language Speech Perception : Initial Capabilities and Developmental Change , 2001 .

[39]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Speech listening specifically modulates the excitability of tongue muscles: a TMS study , 2002, The European journal of neuroscience.

[40]  Jessica Maye,et al.  Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination , 2002, Cognition.

[41]  Naseem Choudhury,et al.  The importance of rapid auditory processing abilities to early language development: evidence from converging methodologies. , 2002, Developmental psychobiology.

[42]  P. Tallal,et al.  Infant discrimination of rapid auditory cues predicts later language impairment , 2002, Behavioural Brain Research.

[43]  G. McRoberts,et al.  Infant Perception of Non-Native Consonant Contrasts that Adults Assimilate in Different Ways , 2003, Language and speech.

[44]  C. Zmarich,et al.  The frequency of consonants and vowels and their co- occurrences in the babbling and early speech of Italian children , 2003 .

[45]  Katherine S. White,et al.  A Statistical Basis for Speech Sound Discrimination , 2003, Language and speech.

[46]  Linda B. Smith,et al.  Development as a dynamic system , 1992, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[47]  M. Iacoboni,et al.  Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[48]  P. Kuhl.  Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code , 2004, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[49]  R. Lickliter,et al.  Intersensory Redundancy Guides the Development of Selective Attention, Perception, and Cognition in Infancy , 2004 .

[50]  P. Hallé,et al.  The role of accentual pattern in early lexical representation , 2004 .

[51]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  The mirror-neuron system. , 2004, Annual review of neuroscience.

[52]  Suzanne Curtin,et al.  PRIMIR: A Developmental Framework of Infant Speech Processing , 2005 .

[53]  Janet F. Werker,et al.  Infant speech perception bootstraps word learning , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[54]  M. Turvey,et al.  The motor theory of speech perception reviewed , 2006, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[55]  P. Kuhl,et al.  Infant speech perception activates Broca's area: a developmental magnetoencephalography study , 2006, Neuroreport.

[56]  Andrew P. King,et al.  Mothers provide differential feedback to infants' prelinguistic sounds , 2006 .

[57]  R. DePaolis,et al.  Getting the rhythm right : A cross-linguistic study of segmental duration in babbling and first words , 2006 .

[58]  M. Sigman,et al.  Functional organization of perisylvian activation during presentation of sentences in preverbal infants , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[59]  Susan S. Jones.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Imitation in Infancy The Development of Mimicry , 2022 .

[60]  Geminate template: A model for first Finnish words , 2007 .

[61]  P. Kuhl,et al.  Phonetic learning as a pathway to language: new data and native language magnet theory expanded (NLM-e) , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[62]  M. Vihman,et al.  From phonetics to phonology: The emergence of first words in Italian* , 2008, Journal of Child Language.

[63]  Sari Kunnari,et al.  Prosody in production at the onset of word use: A cross-linguistic study , 2008, J. Phonetics.

[64]  M. Goldstein,et al.  Social Feedback to Infants' Babbling Facilitates Rapid Phonological Learning , 2008, Psychological science.

[65]  M. Vihman.  The role of mirror neurons in the ontogeny of speech , 2008 .

[66]  J. Werker,et al.  Learning words’ sounds before learning how words sound: 9-Month-olds use distinct objects as cues to categorize speech information , 2009, Cognition.

[67]  Tamar Keren-Portnoy,et al.  The role of vocal practice in constructing phonological working memory. , 2010, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[68]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The Biological Implausibility of the Nature-Nurture Dichotomy & What It Means for the Study of Infancy. , 2011, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[69]  M. Majorano,et al.  The transition into ambient language: A longitudinal study of babbling and first word production of Italian children , 2011 .

[70]  R. DePaolis,et al.  Do production patterns influence the processing of speech in prelinguistic infants? , 2011, Infant behavior & development.

[71]  C. J. Whitaker,et al.  Late talking toddlers : relating early phonological development to later language advance , 2012 .

[72]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Infants deploy selective attention to the mouth of a talking face when learning speech , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[73]  When do infants begin recognizing familiar words in sentences?* , 2012, Journal of Child Language.

[74]  D. Swingley,et al.  At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[75]  R. DePaolis,et al.  The influence of babbling patterns on the processing of speech. , 2013, Infant behavior & development.

[76]  Janet F Werker,et al.  Lip Movements Affect Infants’ Audiovisual Speech Perception , 2013, Psychological science.