DEVELOPMENTAL SPEECH PERCEPTION AND BRAIN PLASTICITY

发育中的言语感知和大脑可塑性

• 批准号: 6521220
• 负责人: PATRICIA K KUHL
• 金额: $ 24.32万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-06-01 至 2004-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6521220
• 关键词: auditory stimulus; behavioral /social science research tag; child psychology; clinical research; early experience; human subject; infant human (0-1 year); language development; neural plasticity; nonEnglish language; speech recognition

During the last 40 years, debate on the origins of language has featured two theoretically dichotomous positions, one that language is largely innately specified, and another, that language is explicitly learned. Recent advances in our understanding of language development take us beyond assertions that language is either instinctual or learned, and teach us something about the actual steps involved in infants' acquisition of a particular language. The data show that biological predispositions and the ability to acquire information through exposure to language are inextricably intertwined. More important than the "interactionist" view this reflects are the details of the findings themselves, revealing how infants move from one level to another, acquiring novel information from exposure to language, using strategies we had not predicted. Data from this laboratory show that in the earliest periods of development, infant perception is structured in a way that greatly assists speech perception, demonstrating a rich initial structure that supports language. Moreover, our cross-language studies show that once experience occurs, infants display an extraordinary ability to acquire the unique properties of a specific language. We show that exposure to a particular language alters infant perception early and in an interesting way. Perception is dynamically restructured as infants "map" the phonetic parameters of their native language. These new data prompted Kuhl to articulate a new theory called the Native Language Magnet theory. It has begun to have an impact within speech and language, as well as in broader areas, including child development, neuroscience, neurobiology, and computational modeling. The theory acts as the background framework for the studies in this proposal. Four converging lines of research are proposed to test the theory and further advance our knowledge of infant speech development: (a) developmental change in infant speech perception, examining the transition in speech perception that occurs between 6 and 12 months; (b) brain correlates (MMN) of speech perception in 6-12 month old infants, (c) analysis of language input to infants, examining the phonetic content of infant-directed speech in detail, and (d) plasticity for phonetic information in infancy, studies that examine the impact of exposure to a foreign-language to assess whether, when, and how infants' sensitivity to new phonetic information changes with age and linguistic experience. The four converging lines of research should produce data that not only address specific theories of speech and language development, but more general theories of the interface between biology and culture.

在过去的 40 年里，关于语言起源的争论在理论上呈现出两种对立的立场，一种认为语言很大程度上是与生俱来的，另一种认为语言是后天习得的。 我们对语言发展理解的最新进展使我们超越了语言要么是本能的要么是后天习得的断言，并教会我们一些关于婴儿习得特定语言的实际步骤。 数据表明，生物倾向和通过接触语言获取信息的能力是密不可分的。 这比所反映的“互动主义”观点更重要的是研究结果本身的细节，揭示了婴儿如何从一个水平移动到另一个水平，如何从接触语言中获取新的信息，使用我们没有预测到的策略。该实验室的数据表明，在发育的最早阶段，婴儿感知的结构极大地帮助了言语感知，展示了支持语言的丰富的初始结构。 此外，我们的跨语言研究表明，一旦经历发生，婴儿就会表现出获得特定语言独特属性的非凡能力。 我们表明，接触特定语言会以一种有趣的方式早期改变婴儿的感知。 当婴儿“映射”其母语的语音参数时，感知会动态地重组。 这些新数据促使库尔提出了一种新理论，称为母语磁力理论。 它已经开始在言语和语言以及更广泛的领域产生影响，包括儿童发展、神经科学、神经生物学和计算建模。 该理论作为本提案研究的背景框架。 提出了四个融合的研究方向来测试该理论并进一步增进我们对婴儿言语发展的了解：（a）婴儿言语知觉的发展变化，检查 6 至 12 个月之间发生的言语知觉的转变； (b) 6-12 个月大婴儿言语感知的大脑关联 (MMN)，(c) 分析婴儿的语言输入，详细检查婴儿定向言语的语音内容，以及 (d) 婴儿期语音信息的可塑性，这些研究检查接触外语的影响，以评估婴儿对新语音信息的敏感性是否、何时以及如何随着年龄和语言经验而变化。 这四个融合的研究方向应该产生的数据不仅涉及言语和语言发展的具体理论，而且还涉及生物学与文化之间的界面的更一般的理论。