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Language Development

Language Development

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.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 12, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Lip movements affect infants' audiovisual speech perception.

H Henny Yeung¹, Janet F Werker

¹University of British Columbia, Canada. henny.yeung@parisdescartes.fr

Psychological Science

|March 30, 2013

Summary

Infants

Area of Science:

Developmental psychology
Auditory perception
Speech perception

Background:

Speech perception is inherently audiovisual from infancy.
Early speech perception relies on integrating auditory and visual cues.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how sensorimotor information from infant lip movements influences audiovisual speech perception.
To explore the interplay between speech production and perception in early development.

Main Methods:

Utilized an audiovisual matching procedure with 4.5-month-old infants.
Presented infants with talking faces and synchronous vowel sounds.
Monitored infants' looking patterns during self-generated lip movements (chewing/sucking).

Main Results:

Keywords:

audiovisual infant language development multisensory perceptual motor coordination sensorimotor speech perception

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Last Updated: May 12, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

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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Published on: April 19, 2017

Infants' attention was biased away from matching audiovisual stimuli when their lip movements conflicted with the perceived speech.
This sensorimotor influence on perception was dependent on the specific vowel sounds and lip movements involved.
Looking patterns reverted to baseline when lip movements did not match the heard vowel.

Conclusions:

Sensorimotor feedback from infant lip movements significantly modulates audiovisual speech perception.
Early speech perception and production systems appear to be mutually informative, influencing each other's development.
Findings suggest a dynamic, bidirectional relationship between motor activity and auditory-visual speech processing in infants.