Fonaments perceptius del cervell bilingüe

Durant el primer any de vida l'infant s'enfronta a diferents reptes, entre els quals cal destacar la difícil i complexa tasca d'aprendre la seva llengua materna. Avui en dia, en moltes societats coexisteixen gran varietat de llengües. Així doncs, molts infants no només adquireixen una única llengua sinó que sovint n'adquireixen dues o més. És important tenir en compte que durant els primers mesos de vida, l'infant d'entorn lingüístic bilingüe mostra una habilitat notable i remarcable per percebre i diferenciar els dos sistemes lingüístics diferents als quals està exposat. Aquí revisarem alguns dels estudis experimentals més destacats sobre adquisició de la parla en infants d'entorn bilingüe, que desvelen les primeres fites o assoliments més destacats implicats en aquest procés d'adquisició de les llengües de l'entorn familiar durant el primer any de vida

Especialización perceptiva multisensorial del habla en la infancia

Durante el primer año de vida, los bebés muestran una disminución en la capacidad para diferenciar sonidos del habla no presentes en su lengua materna. Este fenómeno se conoce como estrechamiento perceptivo (perceptual narrowing). Sin embargo, la percepción del habla no se basa exclusivamente en la modalidad auditiva, sino que para poder percibir adecuadamente el lenguaje, el bebé integra la información auditiva con la visual (el gesto articulatorio). Un estudio reciente demuestra que el estrechamiento perceptivo también sucede a nivel audiovisual: se observa un declive en la detección de la correspondencia sonido-gesto articulatorio (facial) en lenguas no maternas durante el primer año de vida

Children with SLI can exhibit reduced attention to a talker's mouth

It has been demonstrated that children with specific language impairment (SLI) show difficulties not only with auditory but also with audiovisual speech perception. The goal of this study was to assess whether children with SLI might show reduced attention to the talker's mouth compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. An additional aim was to determine whether the pattern of attention to a talking face would be related to a specific subtype of SLI. We used an eye-tracker methodology and presented a video of a talker speaking the children's native language. Results revealed that children with SLI paid significantly less attention to the mouth than the TD children. More specifically, it was also observed that children with a phonological-syntactic deficit looked less to the mouth as compared to the children with a lexical-syntactic deficit

Temporal attention as a Scaffold for Language Development

Language is one of the most fascinating abilities that humans possess. Infants demonstrate an amazing repertoire of linguistic abilities from very early on and reach an adult-like form incredibly fast. However, language is not acquired all at once but in an incremental fashion. In this article we propose that the attentional system may be one of the sources for this developmental trajectory in language acquisition. At birth, infants are endowed with an attentional system fully driven by salient stimuli in their environment, such as prosodic information (e.g., rhythm or pitch). Early stages of language acquisition could benefit from this readily available, stimulus-driven attention to simplify the complex speech input and allow word segmentation. At later stages of development, infants are progressively able to selectively attend to specific elements while disregarding others. This attentional ability could allow them to learn distant non-adjacent rules needed for morphosyntactic acquisition. Because non-adjacent dependencies occur at distant moments in time, learning these dependencies may require correctly orienting attention in the temporal domain. Here, we gather evidence uncovering the intimate relationship between the development of attention and language. We aim to provide a novel approach to human development, bridging together temporal attention and language acquisition

Endogenous temporal attention in the absence of stimulus-driven cues emerges in the second year of life

Podeu consultar dades primàries associades a l'article a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/113258Anticipating both where and when an object will appear is a critical ability for adaptation. Research in the temporal domain in adults indicate that dissociable mechanisms relate to endogenous attention driven by the properties of the stimulus themselves (e.g. rhythmic, sequential, or trajectory cues) and driven by symbolic cues. In infancy, we know that the capacity to endogenously orient attention progressively develops through infancy. However, the above-mentioned distinction has not yet been explored since previous studies involved stimulus-driven cues. The current study tested 12- and 15-month-olds in an adaptation of the anticipatory eye movement procedure to determine whether infants were able to anticipate a specific location and temporal interval predicted only by symbolic pre-cues. In the absence of stimulus-driven cues, results show that only 15-month-olds could show anticipatory behavior based on the temporal information provided by the symbolic cues. Distinguishing stimulus-driven expectations from those driven by symbolic cues allowed dissecting more clearly the developmental progression of temporal endogenous attention

Does language influence the vertical representation of auditory pitch and loudness?

Higher frequency and louder sounds are associated with higher positions whereas lower frequency and quieter sounds are associated with lower locations. In English, ''high'' and ''low'' are used to label pitch, loudness, and spatial verticality. By contrast, different words are preferentially used, in Catalan and Spanish, for pitch (high: ''agut/agudo''; low: ''greu/grave'') and for loudness/verticality (high: ''alt/alto''; low: ''baix/bajo''). Thus, English and Catalan/Spanish differ in the spatial connotations for pitch. To analyze the influence of language on these crossmodal associations, a task was conducted in which English and Spanish/Catalan speakers had to judge whether a tone was higher or lower (in pitch or loudness) than a reference tone. The response buttons were located at crossmodally congruent or incongruent positions with respect to the probe tone. Crossmodal correspondences were evidenced in both language groups. However, English speakers showed greater effects for pitch, suggesting an influence of linguistic background

Fonaments perceptius del cervell bilingüe

Durant el primer any de vida l'infant s'enfronta a diferents reptes, entre els quals cal destacar la difícil i complexa tasca d'aprendre la seva llengua materna. Avui en dia, en moltes societats coexisteixen gran varietat de llengües. Així doncs, molts infants no només adquireixen una única llengua sinó que sovint n'adquireixen dues o més. És important tenir en compte que durant els primers mesos de vida, l'infant d'entorn lingüístic bilingüe mostra una habilitat notable i remarcable per percebre i diferenciar els dos sistemes lingüístics diferents als quals està exposat. Aquí revisarem alguns dels estudis experimentals més destacats sobre adquisició de la parla en infants d'entorn bilingüe, que desvelen les primeres fites o assoliments més destacats implicats en aquest procés d'adquisició de les llengües de l'entorn familiar durant el primer any de vida

Endogenous temporal attention in the absence of stimulus-driven cues emerges in the second year of life

Podeu consultar dades primàries associades a l'article a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/113258Anticipating both where and when an object will appear is a critical ability for adaptation. Research in the temporal domain in adults indicate that dissociable mechanisms relate to endogenous attention driven by the properties of the stimulus themselves (e.g. rhythmic, sequential, or trajectory cues) and driven by symbolic cues. In infancy, we know that the capacity to endogenously orient attention progressively develops through infancy. However, the above-mentioned distinction has not yet been explored since previous studies involved stimulus-driven cues. The current study tested 12- and 15-month-olds in an adaptation of the anticipatory eye movement procedure to determine whether infants were able to anticipate a specific location and temporal interval predicted only by symbolic pre-cues. In the absence of stimulus-driven cues, results show that only 15-month-olds could show anticipatory behavior based on the temporal information provided by the symbolic cues. Distinguishing stimulus-driven expectations from those driven by symbolic cues allowed dissecting more clearly the developmental progression of temporal endogenous attention

Temporal attention as a Scaffold for Language Development

Language is one of the most fascinating abilities that humans possess. Infants demonstrate an amazing repertoire of linguistic abilities from very early on and reach an adult-like form incredibly fast. However, language is not acquired all at once but in an incremental fashion. In this article we propose that the attentional system may be one of the sources for this developmental trajectory in language acquisition. At birth, infants are endowed with an attentional system fully driven by salient stimuli in their environment, such as prosodic information (e.g., rhythm or pitch). Early stages of language acquisition could benefit from this readily available, stimulus-driven attention to simplify the complex speech input and allow word segmentation. At later stages of development, infants are progressively able to selectively attend to specific elements while disregarding others. This attentional ability could allow them to learn distant non-adjacent rules needed for morphosyntactic acquisition. Because non-adjacent dependencies occur at distant moments in time, learning these dependencies may require correctly orienting attention in the temporal domain. Here, we gather evidence uncovering the intimate relationship between the development of attention and language. We aim to provide a novel approach to human development, bridging together temporal attention and language acquisition

Are gesture and prosodic prominences always coordinated?: evidence from perception and production

Comunicació presentada a: Speech Prosody 2014, celebrada del 20 al 23 de maig de 2014 a Dublin, Irlanda.This study explores the temporal coordination between gesture and speech by addressing two main questions: (1) Are speakers sensitive to the misalignment between gesture prominence and prosodic prominence? (2) Is this sensitivity modulated by the semantic information conveyed by gesture and speech modalities in production? Experiment 1 tested question (1) and Experiment 2 tested question (2). Results from Experiment 1 revealed that the combinations in which prominences were misaligned were less acceptable than combinations with aligned prominences, and that the metrical pattern of the target word had an effect on the speakers’ sensitivity: unsynchronized trochees (with the gesture prominence at the post-tonic syllable) were frequently accepted, while unsynchronized iambs (with the gesture prominence at the pre-tonic syllable) were rejected. Results from Experiment 2 revealed that when the pointing gesture adds information to speech, i.e. it is supplementary to speech, the prominences are frequently misaligned (with gesture occurring after the speech), as if two different speech acts were produced. These findings suggest that the semantic content of gesture-speech combinations might influence the speakers’ sensitivity of the misalignment between prosodic and gesture prominences.This research has been funded by grants FFI2012-31995, PSI-2011-25376, 2009SGR-701, and by the RECERCAIXA 2012 grant “Els precursors del llenguatge: una guia TIC per a pares i educadors”