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Related Concept Videos

Language Development01:22

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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 12, 2026

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
06:34

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Optical brain imaging reveals general auditory and language-specific processing in early infant development.

Yasuyo Minagawa-Kawai1, Heather van der Lely, Franck Ramus

  • 1Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, ENS-DEC-EHESS-CNRS, Paris 75005, France. myasuyo@bea.hi-ho.ne.jp

Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|May 26, 2010
PubMed
Summary

Four-month-old infants show left-lateralized brain responses to speech, with stronger activation for their native language (L1) than non-native (L2). This suggests an early, language-specific neural sensitivity in infant speech processing.

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Published on: April 19, 2017

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Auditory Neuroscience

Background:

  • Infant speech perception research has indicated left-lateralized brain responses to native languages.
  • Previous studies could not distinguish between language-specific processing and low-level acoustic features of speech.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the neural basis of functional cerebral processing for speech in young infants.
  • To differentiate language-specific responses from acoustic processing using controlled non-speech stimuli.
  • To identify early neural precursors of language specialization.

Main Methods:

  • Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was employed to measure hemodynamic responses in 4-month-old Japanese infants.
  • Infants were exposed to native (L1) and non-native (L2) languages, alongside non-speech sounds (emotional voices, monkey calls, phase-scrambled sounds).
  • A novel analysis method for infant hemodynamic data was implemented to account for slower time courses in awake infants.

Main Results:

  • Clear left-lateralized brain activation was observed in response to speech stimuli, particularly for the native language (L1).
  • Non-speech stimuli elicited varied activation patterns, distinct from speech responses.
  • A significantly higher sensitivity to L1 compared to L2 was detected in 4-month-olds.
  • A slower hemodynamic time course was identified in awake infants using the new analysis method.

Conclusions:

  • Infant brain responses to speech are largely driven by signal-based auditory processing.
  • A language-specific neural factor modulates speech processing, favoring the native language even at 4 months of age.
  • This study reveals an early neural precursor to the functional specialization of the brain for language, demonstrating heightened sensitivity to the native language.