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Development of language-specific phoneme representations in the infant brain

Nature Neuroscience volume 1, pages 351–353 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

Studies using behavioral methods, such as head-turning experiments, in which children are conditioned to turn their heads toward the sound source when they detect a change in the sound, have shown that environment has an important effect on how infants perceive language1,2,3,4. Young infants are able to discriminate almost all phonetic contrasts, whereas older infants discriminate better between phonemes that occur in the language that they normally hear, rather than foreign-language phonemes. Here we demonstrate the development of language-specific 'memory traces' in the brains of the same group of infants between six months and one year of age.

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Figure 1: Stimuli used in the experiment.
Figure 2: The MMN amplitude at the central Cz electrode (grand-average, deviant-standard difference waveform, averaged across nine infants) reflects the development of language-specific memory traces in Finnish infants.
Figure 3: The MMN peak amplitude (at Cz) as a function of the deviant stimulus.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland. We thank P. Alku for producing the stimuli and Sanna Kurjenluoma, Nina Penttinen and Marieke Saher for data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology University of Helsinki, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, FIN-00014, Finland

    Marie Cheour, Rita Ceponiene, Anne Lehtokoski, Kimmo Alho & Risto Näätänen

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia

    Aavo Luuk & Jüri Allik

  3. BioMag laboratory, P.O.Box 508, HYKS, 00029, Finland

    Kimmo Alho & Risto Näätänen

Authors
  1. Marie Cheour
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  2. Rita Ceponiene
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  3. Anne Lehtokoski
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  7. Risto Näätänen
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Correspondence to Marie Cheour.

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Cheour, M., Ceponiene, R., Lehtokoski, A. et al. Development of language-specific phoneme representations in the infant brain. Nat Neurosci 1, 351–353 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/1561

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