Sound symbolism bootstraps infants into referential insight

将语音与意义联系起来是婴儿学习语言的关键一步。通过脑电图相同步和事件相关的脑电位，我们发现声音象征有助于11个月大的婴儿建立这种联系。声音-符号匹配的形状-声音对（例如，一个尖的形状后面跟着声音“kipi”）引出了平滑的长距离相位同步，表明毫不费力的绑定。相比之下，声音-符号不匹配的形状-声音对在左半球引发了费力的交流，并在单词开始后400毫秒增加了大脑潜在的负性。这表明，婴儿通过先天的多模态整合能力自发地映射语音和指称物，这种能力引导婴儿形成对语音的指称性洞察，并掌握单词的象征性。

Relating speech sound to meaning is a critical step for infants to break into language. Using EEG phase synchronization and event-related brain potentials, we show that sound symbolism helps 11-month-olds establish this link. Sound-symbolically matched shape-sound pairs (e.g., a spiky shape followed by the sound 'kipi') elicited smooth long-distance phase synchronization, suggesting effortless binding. In contrast, sound-symbolically mismatched shape-sound pairs elicited effortful communication over the left hemisphere, and increased brain potential negativity 400 ms after word onset. This suggests that infants spontaneously map speech sounds and the referent by biologically endowed multi-modal integration ability, and this ability bootstraps infants into referential insights for speech sounds and grasp the symbolic nature of words.