Look who s talking: Interactions between face processing and speech perception during perceptual narrowing in monolingual and bilingual German and French infants

婴儿从一开始就接触到会说话的面孔。在他们出生的第一年，他们开始熟悉自己的母语，也开始熟悉父母族群的面孔。在学习母语时，婴儿会使用听觉和视觉信息。尽管人们认为婴儿的语言和面部处理有相似之处，但对这两种能力发展的系统研究仍然缺乏。本项目旨在通过分析婴儿言语和面部加工之间的相互作用来探讨这一问题。特别是，我们将研究这种相互作用在多大程度上受到感知狭窄的影响，这已经被证明在两种模式下都发生，以及这种相互作用是否受到双语的调节。为了解决这些问题，我们将测试法语和德语单语和双语婴儿的母语与非母语语言以及本种族与其他种族的面部加工。这些婴儿属于同一个高加索族群，这将使我们能够系统地测试不同母语的影响，通过保持环境面部种族不变。我们将通过4个实验来研究语音和人脸处理之间的相互作用。在第一组实验中，我们将评估当说话者的面孔属于一个不熟悉的种族和当婴儿在双语环境中长大时，婴儿对视听语言的整合是否会有所不同。在第二组中，我们将研究语言在婴儿隐性种族偏见出现中的作用。我们首先要揭示的是，母语是否更有可能与婴儿自己的种族有关，反之亦然，以及这种联系是否会影响婴儿对他人的信心。我们在婴儿实验室之间独特的法德合作，使得在两种不同类型的语言中解决婴儿视听处理的这些关键问题成为可能。这也将使我们有机会接触到大量的双语婴儿，我们预计其中有足够数量的法语和德语双语者。babyfacesech项目的预期理论结果是对发展过程中语音和面部处理之间的相互作用以及双语对多模态感知变窄的调节作用的全面描述。我们的项目也有临床应用，因为它将提供标准来评估有语言和面部处理延迟和障碍风险的婴儿和儿童（如特殊语言障碍，自闭症谱系综合征，发展性面孔失认症或发展性语音失认症）。“婴儿脸演讲”项目也有社会影响，因为它将有助于理清影响隐性种族偏见发展的因素。

From the beginning of life infants are exposed to talking faces. During their first year they become attuned to their native language as well as to faces which belong to their parents ethnic group. In learning their native language, infants will use auditory as well as visual information. Although parallels in infants speech and face processing have been assumed, systematic research on the development of both abilities is still lacking. It is the aim of this project to investigate this issue by analyzing the interaction between speech and face processing in infants. In particular, we will investigate the extent to which this interaction is shaped by perceptual narrowing, which has been shown to take place in both modalities, and whether this interaction is modulated by bilingualism. To address these questions we will test native vs. non-native speech and own- vs. other-race face processing in French and German mono- and bilingual infants. These infants belong to the same Caucasian ethnic group, which will allow us to systematically test the influence of varying native languages by keeping ambient face race constant. We will investigate the proposed interaction between speech and face processing in 4 experiments. In the first set of experiments we will assess whether infants integration of audio-visual speech differs when the faces of the speakers belong to an unfamiliar race and when infants grow up bilingually. In a second set, we will examine the role of language in the emergence of the implicit racial bias in infants. We want first to uncover if native language is more likely to be associated to infants own race and vice versa and if this association impacts infants confidence in other people. Our unique French-German collaboration between baby labs makes it possible to address these crucial questions on infants audio-visual processing in two typologically different languages with a single face category. It will also allow us to have access to a large population of bilingual infants, among which we expect a sufficient number of French-German bilinguals. The expected theoretical outcome of the BabyFaceSpeech project is a thorough account of the interaction between speech and face processing during development and of the modulatory role of bilingualism on multimodal perceptual narrowing. Our project also has clinical applications as it will provide standards to assess infants and children who are at risk for speech and face processing delays and disorders (such as specific language impairment, autism spectrum syndrome, developmental prosopagnosia or developmental phonagnosia). The BabyFaceSpeech project also has societal outcomes as it will help disentangle factors that influence the development of the implicit racial bias.