Articulating while listening supports the emerging perception-production link in early infancy

Area of Science:

• Developmental psychology
• Speech perception and production
• Infant motor control

Background:

• Research suggests a link between infant speech perception and production.
• This perception-production link emerges early in infancy.
• Mechanisms for this developmental link remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if infants produce speech-driven articulatory movements while perceiving speech.
• To explore the early development of the perception-production link in infants.

Main Methods:

• Ultrasound imaging was used to record tongue shapes of 6-month-old infants.
• Infants listened to vowel-consonant-vowel sequences with varying consonant articulation.
• Tongue shape variations were analyzed in response to different speech sounds (/t/ vs. /k/).

Main Results:

• Infants' tongue shapes varied based on the perceived speech token.
• Articulatory movements, specifically tongue placement (front/back), corresponded to heard sounds.
• This indicates infants modulate oral-motor responses to perceived speech.

Conclusions:

• Findings provide the first evidence of speech-driven oral-motor responses in infants during speech perception.
• Supports the idea that early speech perception is intrinsically linked to motor control mechanisms.
• Advances understanding of how the perception-production link develops in infancy.