Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

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...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Comparing to a Neurotypical Norm Is Normal in Autistic Language and Communication Research: A Cross-Sectional Systematic Review and Critical Analysis of Recent Literature.

Autism & developmental language impairments·2026

Same author

Spoken language processing in noise by deaf and hard of hearing children: Effects of speaking ratea).

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·2025

Same author

The acquisition of plain-emphatic consonant contrasts by Arabic-speaking children: An acoustic study.

Journal of child language·2025

Same author

Acoustic exaggeration of vowels in infant-directed speech: A multimethod meta-analytic review.

Psychological bulletin·2025

Same author

Investigating the Effects of Speaking Rate on Spoken Language Processing in Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR·2025

Same author

Due to increased variability, the expanded vowel and tone space in Mandarin IDS does not lead to enhanced contrasts.

Journal of child language·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 31, 2025

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Infants Segment Words from Songs-An EEG Study.

Tineke M Snijders^1,2, Titia Benders³, Paula Fikkert^2,4

¹Language Development Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

|January 16, 2020

Summary

Ten-month-old infants can segment words from children's songs, but do not recognize them later in speech. This suggests acoustic factors in songs and speech influence early word learning.

Keywords:

EEG ERP familiarity infant polarity recognition song speech word segmentation

More Related Videos

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

Investigating Social Cognition in Infants and Adults Using Dense Array Electroencephalography dEEG

Investigating Social Cognition in Infants and Adults Using Dense Array Electroencephalography dEEG

Published on: June 27, 2011

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Dec 31, 2025

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

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

Investigating Social Cognition in Infants and Adults Using Dense Array Electroencephalography dEEG

Investigating Social Cognition in Infants and Adults Using Dense Array Electroencephalography dEEG

Published on: June 27, 2011

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Linguistics

Background:

Infants are exposed to children's songs, which contain linguistic-phonetic information.
Previous research indicates infants can process phonetic details from simplified sung melodies.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if 10-month-old infants can learn words from ecologically valid children's songs.
To compare word segmentation abilities in songs versus continuous speech.

Main Methods:

Utilized an electroencephalography (EEG) familiarization-then-test paradigm with 40 Dutch-learning 10-month-olds.
Infants were exposed to target words embedded in either songs or speech during familiarization.
Tested for word recognition in continuous speech after familiarization.

Main Results:

A positive event-related potential (ERP) familiarity effect was observed for target words in both song and speech familiarization.
No evidence of word recognition in the test phase was found after either song or speech familiarization.
Acoustic prominence and speech rate may influence ERP familiarity effects and word recognition.

Conclusions:

Ten-month-old infants demonstrate the ability to segment words presented within children's songs.
Further research is needed to understand the acoustic and other factors influencing infant word segmentation from different auditory inputs like songs and speech.