Auditory Development and the Role of Experience in Infants and Young Children

婴幼儿的听觉发展和经验的作用

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-04700
• 负责人: Trainor, Laurel
• 金额: $ 5.17万
• 依托单位: McMaster University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=611192
• 关键词: Auditory; Development; Role; Experience; Infants

Hearing is the primary sense for communication through language and music; as a consequence, auditory perception impacts language, cognitive and social development. The immaturity of auditory processing in young infants, coupled with a protracted period of development, indicates an extended period of experience-dependent plasticity during which the particular auditory experiences of an individual shape future auditory processing capabilities. The goal of the proposed research is to understand early auditory development and learning in three critical areas. (1) WINDOWS OF PLASTICITY AND EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE ON THE DISCRIMINATION OF VOICES. Learning to identify and discriminate people by voice is important for cognitive and social development. Across a number of domains, including faces, phonemes and music, young infants discriminate stimuli within native or foreign categories equally well, whereas older infants and adults perform much better with native stimuli. We showed that such experience-driven perceptual narrowing also occurs for voice discrimination. Specifically, the ability of human infants to discriminate rhesus monkeys, but not humans, by voice declined between 6 and 12 months of age. Here we investigate (a) whether the effect generalizes across different species, (b) the nature of voice categories by exploring voice discrimination in languages similar or dissimilar to the native language, and (c) plasticity for learning new voice categories across childhood. This work will significantly increase our understanding of voice processing in particular, and learning and plasticity in auditory development in general. (2) THE BASIS OF SENSORY CONSONANCE PERCEPTION IN YOUNG INFANTS. The distinction between sensory consonance (notes rated by adults as sounding good together) and dissonance (unpleasant or rough) forms the basis of musical pitch structure. In previous work we showed that infants as young as 2 months age prefer consonance over dissonance. The classical theory states that dissonance arises from interactions (beating) on the basilar membrane in the ear between harmonics close in frequency. A more recent theory states that consonance arises instead from harmonicity, or the extent to which all harmonics of all tones present are integer multiple of a common fundamental frequency. Here we investigate (1) whether infants prefer sounds with less beating and sounds with greater harmonicity and (2) whether their preference for consonance is a result of a preference for no beating or for harmonicity. Because perception of consonance and dissonance are fundamental for musical pitch structure, understanding the nature of early preferences and how they are modified by experience is essential for understanding the perceptual origins of music. (3) DEVELOPMENT OF SENSITIVITY TO MUSICAL TONALITY AND EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. We have shown that infants and children learn the musical pitch structure of the music to which they are exposed in an orderly way, just as they learn language. This work consists largely of data from infants and older children because toddlers (2-3 years) are difficult to test (will not sit for infant procedures and cannot easily follow instructions and answer questions). However, critical development takes place during toddlerhood. We propose two methods for toddlers. In one, we examine whether toddlers choose hand puppets that dance, for example, to tonal music over those that dance to atonal music. The second method involves measuring EEG responses to violations of tonal structure. These findings will significantly increase our understanding of musical development and provide practical information, such as at what ages children benefit from what types of musical classes.

听觉是通过语言和音乐进行交流的主要感觉;因此，听觉感知影响语言，认知和社会发展。幼儿听觉处理的不成熟，加上一个长期的发展，表明一个长期的经验依赖的可塑性，在此期间，一个人的特定的听觉经验形状未来的听觉处理能力。这项研究的目的是了解三个关键领域的早期听觉发展和学习。 (1)可塑性窗口和经验对声音辨别的影响。学会通过声音识别和区分人对认知和社会发展很重要。在许多领域，包括面孔，音素和音乐，年幼的婴儿在本地或外国类别的刺激同样好的区别，而年龄较大的婴儿和成人表现更好的本地刺激。我们发现，这种经验驱动的知觉狭窄也发生在声音辨别上。具体来说，人类婴儿通过声音辨别恒河猴而不是人类的能力在6到12个月大的时候下降了。在这里，我们调查（a）是否在不同物种的影响普遍化，（B）的声音类别的性质，通过探索语音歧视的语言相似或不相似的母语，和（c）可塑性学习新的语音类别在整个童年。这项工作将显着增加我们对语音处理的理解，特别是在听觉发展中的学习和可塑性。 (2)幼儿感觉和谐知觉的基础感觉和谐（成年人认为一起听起来很好的音符）和不和谐（不愉快或粗糙）之间的区别形成了音高结构的基础。在以前的研究中，我们发现2个月大的婴儿更喜欢协和音而不是不协和音。经典理论指出，不和谐音是由频率接近的谐波之间在耳中的基底膜上的相互作用（跳动）引起的。最近的一个理论指出，协和音是由和声性（harmonicity）或所有音调的所有谐波都是一个共同基频的整数倍的程度产生的。在这里，我们调查（1）婴儿是否更喜欢较少跳动的声音和具有较大和谐性的声音，以及（2）他们对协和的偏好是否是无跳动或和谐性偏好的结果。因为对和谐和不和谐的感知是音乐音高结构的基础，所以理解早期偏好的性质以及它们如何被经验修改对于理解音乐的感知起源至关重要。 (3)对音乐音调敏感性的发展和经验的影响。我们已经证明，婴儿和儿童学习音乐的音高结构，他们是以有序的方式接触的，就像他们学习语言一样。这项工作主要由婴儿和年龄较大的儿童的数据组成，因为幼儿（2-3岁）很难测试（不会坐在婴儿程序中，不能很容易地遵循指示和回答问题）。然而，关键的发展发生在幼儿期。我们提出了两种方法为幼儿。在一个，我们研究是否幼儿选择手木偶跳舞，例如，对调性音乐比那些跳舞的无调性音乐。第二种方法涉及测量违反音调结构的EEG反应。这些发现将大大增加我们对音乐发展的理解，并提供实用的信息，例如什么年龄的孩子从什么类型的音乐课程中受益。