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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 19, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Earlier speech exposure does not accelerate speech acquisition.

Marcela Peña¹, Janet F Werker, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz

¹Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 7820436 Santiago, Chile. pena@sissa.it

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|August 17, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Brain maturation, not speech exposure duration, governs language learning sensitivity in infants. Preterm infants do not show enhanced phoneme discrimination despite earlier environmental exposure, indicating critical periods are brain-development driven.

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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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Area of Science:

Developmental Neuroscience
Linguistics
Cognitive Science

Background:

Critical periods for language acquisition are often studied in deaf or bilingual populations.
Understanding early language sensitivity requires examining responses to phonetic changes in infants.
In utero sound exposure is filtered, potentially disadvantaging preterm infants.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the onset of sensitivity to the linguistic environment in human infants.
To compare phoneme discrimination in full-term and preterm infants using event-related potentials.
To determine if brain maturation or duration of auditory exposure shapes phonological representations.

Main Methods:

Utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure infant responses to phonetic contrasts.
Studied full-term and preterm infants at a native and nonnative phonetic boundary.
Analyzed the mismatch response amplitude to nonnative phoneme changes.

Main Results:

Full-term infants exhibited reduced discrimination of nonnative phonetic contrasts between 9-12 months.
Preterm infants did not show enhanced discrimination despite earlier exposure to speech sounds.
The decline in nonnative phoneme discrimination was linked to maturational age, not exposure duration.

Conclusions:

Early language acquisition sensitivity is constrained by brain maturation, not solely environmental input.
The typical decline in nonnative phoneme discrimination is a maturational process.
Preterm infants' language development is influenced by neural maturation timing.