Sound symbolism bootstraps infants into referential insight

将语音与意义联系起来是婴儿进入语言的关键一步。使用EEG相位同步和事件相关脑电位，我们表明，声音象征帮助11个月大的孩子建立这种联系。声音-符号匹配的形状-声音对（例如，尖状的形状，随后是声音“kipi”）引起平滑的长距离相位同步，表明不费力的结合。相比之下，声音-象征性不匹配的形状-声音对在左半球引起了努力的交流，并在单词开始后400 ms增加了脑电位负性。这表明，婴儿自发地映射语音和所指的生物赋予的多通道整合能力，这种能力引导婴儿进入参考见解的语音和掌握的象征性质的话。

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.