Developmental changes in brain response to speech perception in late-talking children: A longitudinal MMR study

AbstractThis study used a longitudinal design to examine the development of mismatch responses (MMRs) to Mandarin lexical tones, an index of neural speech discriminative responses, in late talkers and typical controls at 3, 5, and 6 years of age. Lexical tones are phonetic suprasegments that distinguish the lexical meanings of syllables in tonal languages. The 2 year-old late talkers were later divided into persistent language delay and late bloomer groups according to their performance on standardized language tests at 4 years. Results showed that children with persistent language delay demonstrated more positive mismatch responses than the typical controls at 3 years of age. At the age of 5, no group difference were found in the amplitude of MMRs, but the maturation of MMRs could be observed in the change of topography, with more prominent negative response in the frontal sites only in the typical group. Correlations were found between the index of MMRs at 3 years and children’s language performance outcome at 6 years. Our results indicate that the development of fine-grained tone representations is delayed in late-talking children between 3 and 5 years and may be one of the underlying mechanisms which associated with later language performance

Language variation in teacher speech in a dual immersion preschool

This study investigates the language input provided for English-Mandarin emergent bilingual children in a California English-Mandarin dual immersion preschool. As illustrated in previous studies, teacher speech in foreign language classrooms often serves as the native standard of the target language, thus necessarily limiting students’ exposure to stylistic variation. The current research focused on the language input for emergent bilingual preschoolers who were Chinese heritage language learners and the use of sociolinguistic variables, including Mandarin lexical tones and word-initial sibilants, by their teachers. Results show that although the teachers perceived their classroom roles differently, they tried to provide clear and rich Mandarin input with tonal and sibilant variables that were used in consistent patterns. Except for the constraints of the linguistic environment, standard variables were preferred in classroom discourse. This implies that the particular needs of the English-dominant children to acquire Mandarin have been acknowledged and addressed by teachers. This type of modification in language input may affect children’s development of phonetic categories and their sociolinguistic competence

Effects of early language experiences on the auditory brainstem

Recent studies have come to contradicting conclusions as to whether international adoptees, who experience a sudden change in language environment, lose or retain traces of their birth language (Pallier et al., 2003; Ventureyra, Pallier & Yoo, 2004; Pierce, Klein, Chen, Delcenserie, & Genesee, 2014). Though these studies have considered cortical differences between international adoptees and individuals from their birth counties, none has looked at subcortical differences in the brain between the two groups. The current project examined the frequency following response of adult Chinese international adoptees (N = 9) adopted as infants by American English-speaking families in the United States compared to native Mandarin (N = 21) and American English (N = 21) controls. Additional behavioral tasks were completed to explore different levels of linguistic features from phonetics to phonology to semantic knowledge to suprasegmental characteristics of speech. The FFR results indicate mostly good pitch tracking abilities amongst the adoptees that may support future tonal language learning in the adoptees. The behavioral data suggest that the adoptees have minimal access to all levels of linguistic levels of linguistic processing (i.e., phonetic, phonological, lexical, suprasegmental) after adoption and after early exposure to English. Overall, the data provide evidence for the neural commitment theory that humans’ language acquisition is attuned to their language environment early on in life

Children\u27s Sensitivity to Pitch Variation in Language

Children acquire consonant and vowel categories by 12 months, but take much longer to learn to interpret perceptible variation. This dissertation considers children’s interpretation of pitch variation. Pitch operates, often simultaneously, at different levels of linguistic structure. English-learning children must disregard pitch at the lexical level—since English is not a tone language—while still attending to pitch for its other functions. Chapters 1 and 5 outline the learning problem and suggest ways children might solve it. Chapter 2 demonstrates that 2.5-year-olds know pitch cannot differentiate words in English. Chapter 3 finds that not until age 4–5 do children correctly interpret pitch cues to emotions. Chapter 4 demonstrates some sensitivity between 2.5 and 5 years to the pitch cue to lexical stress, but continuing difficulties at the older ages. These findings suggest a late trajectory for interpretation of prosodic variation; throughout, I propose explanations for this protracted time-course

Training Children to Perceive Non-native Lexical Tones: Tone Language Background, Bilingualism, and Auditory-Visual Information

This study investigates the role of language background and bilingual status in the perception of foreign lexical tones. Eight groups of participants, consisting of children of 6 and 8 years from one of four language background (tone or non-tone) × bilingual status (monolingual or bilingual)—Thai monolingual, English monolingual, English-Thai bilingual, and English-Arabic bilingual were trained to perceive the four Mandarin lexical tones. Half the children in each of these eight groups were given auditory-only (AO) training and half auditory-visual (AV) training. In each group Mandarin tone identification was tested before and after (pre- and post-) training with both auditory-only test (ao-test) and auditory-visual test (av test). The effect of training on Mandarin tone identification was minimal for 6-year-olds. On the other hand, 8-year-olds, particularly those with tone language experience showed greater pre- to post-training improvement, and this was best indexed by ao-test trials. Bilingual vs. monolingual background did not facilitate overall improvement due to training, but it did modulate the efficacy of the Training mode: for bilinguals both AO and AV training, and especially AO, resulted in performance gain; but for monolinguals training was most effective with AV stimuli. Again this effect was best indexed by ao-test trials. These results suggest that tone language experience, be it monolingual or bilingual, is a strong predictor of learning unfamiliar tones; that monolinguals learn best from AV training trials and bilinguals from AO training trials; and that there is no metalinguistic advantage due to bilingualism in learning to perceive lexical tones

A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

Language and Speech Rhythmic Abilities Correlate with L2 Prosody Imitation Abilities in Typologically Different Languages

International audienceWhile many studies have demonstrated the relationship between musical rhythm and speech prosody, this has been rarely addressed in the context of second language (L2) acquisition. Here, we investigated whether musical rhythmic skills and the production of L2 speech prosody are predictive of one another. We tested both musical and linguistic rhythmic competences of 23 native French speakers of L2 English. Participants completed perception and production music and language tests. In the prosody production test, sentences containing trisyllabic words with either a prominence on the first or on the second syllable were heard and had to be reproduced. Participants were less accurate in reproducing penultimate accent placement. Moreover, the accuracy in reproducing phonologically disfavored stress patterns was best predicted by rhythm production abilities. Our results show, for the first time, that better reproduction of musical rhythmic sequences is predictive of a more successful realization of unfamiliar L2 prosody, specifically in terms of stress-accent placement