Event-related potential features of suprasegmental speech cues processing in infancy
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1
Research Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
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2
Department of Obsterics and Gynecology, Semmelweis University, Hungary
During the process of language perception, infants have different tasks to solve. Phoneme perception studies revealed that normalization and categorical perception are essential features of speech comprehension. From behavioral and ERP studies we know that from the beginning of their life, young infants without special training or instruction have access to phonemic representation. Along with these local speech cues however there exist the so called suprasegmental speech cues that may also contribute to the transformation of input to the prelexical intermediate representation. One of these psycho-acoustic features is the word stress. We know from earlier studies that from 5 months of age infants are sensitive to the rhythmic properties of language inputs that are characteristic of their mother language. The stress though is a complex phenomenon. Different languages use different characteristics (pitch, length of syllables) to sign stress. In Hungarian, we use long vowels without stress on them; nevertheless the case is simple in that way that as a rule the stress is always on the first syllable.
In this study, our aim was to investigate the difference between processing phonemic and rhythmic speech cues before the first year of life. In addition to this, we inquired into the developmental patterns characteristic of at risk infant groups (preterm infants) because of the need of early detection and correction of potential developmental irregularities.
33 6- and 10-month old, full-term and pre-term infants were participated in the experiment.
We used a passive oddball paradigm with a standard Hungarian word ‘banán’ (‘banana’ in English) and two deviants: a voiceless phoneme deviant (‘panán’, which is meaningless in Hungarian), and a stress deviant where the stress was on the second syllable, instead of the first (‘ban:án’).
Our results show that at the early ages (6 months of age) there were significant differences between the preterm and full-term infant groups in the two experimental conditions. At six months of age, special response-patterns were revealed in the full-term control group; there were huge responses for the standard and for both of the deviant stimuli. The normal ten months olds' response was quite the opposite. The pre-term responses were always between the two normal control groups'. The additional analyses revealed that for ten months of age even at-risk infants tend to show the normal response patterns but still in a rudimentary form. The response patterns from the different electrodes suggest great brain maturation differences.
Conference:
MMN 09
Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Presentations
Citation:
Rago
A,
Honbolygó
F,
Csépe
V,
Róna
Z and
Beke
A
(2009). Event-related potential features of suprasegmental speech cues processing in infancy.
Conference Abstract:
MMN 09
Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.139
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Received:
26 Mar 2009;
Published Online:
26 Mar 2009.
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Correspondence:
Anett Rago, Research Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, rago@cogpsyphy.hu