@ARTICLE{10.3389/fnhum.2022.941853, AUTHOR={Zhao, Tian Christina and Llanos, Fernando and Chandrasekaran, Bharath and Kuhl, Patricia K.}, TITLE={Language experience during the sensitive period narrows infants’ sensory encoding of lexical tones—Music intervention reverses it}, JOURNAL={Frontiers in Human Neuroscience}, VOLUME={16}, YEAR={2022}, URL={https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.941853}, DOI={10.3389/fnhum.2022.941853}, ISSN={1662-5161}, ABSTRACT={The sensitive period for phonetic learning (6∼12 months), evidenced by improved native speech processing and declined non-native speech processing, represents an early milestone in language acquisition. We examined the extent that sensory encoding of speech is altered by experience during this period by testing two hypotheses: (1) early sensory encoding of non-native speech declines as infants gain native-language experience, and (2) music intervention reverses this decline. We longitudinally measured the frequency-following response (FFR), a robust indicator of early sensory encoding along the auditory pathway, to a Mandarin lexical tone in 7- and 11-months-old monolingual English-learning infants. Infants received either no intervention (language-experience group) or music intervention (music-intervention group) randomly between FFR recordings. The language-experience group exhibited the expected decline in FFR pitch-tracking accuracy to the Mandarin tone, while the music-intervention group did not. Our results support both hypotheses and demonstrate that both language and music experiences alter infants’ speech encoding.} }