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: 2017
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=631167
• 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，听觉影响着语言、认知和社会的发展。婴幼儿听觉加工的不成熟，加上漫长的发育期，表明依赖经验的可塑性延长，在此期间，个人特定的听觉经验塑造了未来的听觉加工能力。这项拟议的研究的目标是了解早期听觉发育和三个关键领域的学习。(1)声音辨别的可塑性窗口和经验效应。学会用声音辨认和辨别人对于认知和社会发展很重要。在许多领域，包括面孔、音素和音乐，幼儿对本国或外国类别的刺激的辨别能力一样好，而较大的婴儿和成年人对本土刺激的表现要好得多。我们发现，这种由经验驱动的知觉缩小也发生在声音辨别上。具体地说，人类婴儿通过声音辨别恒河猴的能力在6到12个月大的时候下降了。在这里，我们调查(A)这种影响是否在不同物种中普遍存在，(B)通过探索与母语相似或不相似的语言中的语音辨别来研究语音类别的性质，以及(C)儿童学习新语音类别的可塑性。这项工作将显著增加我们对语音处理的理解，特别是对听觉发育的学习和可塑性。(2)婴幼儿感觉和谐知觉的基础。感觉上的和声(成人认为一起听起来很好听的音符)和不和谐(不愉快或粗糙)之间的区别构成了音乐音高结构的基础。在之前的工作中，我们发现两个月大的婴儿更喜欢和谐而不是不和谐。经典理论认为，不和谐是由于频率相近的谐波之间在耳朵基底膜上的相互作用(跳动)而产生的。一种较新的理论指出，和声是由和声产生的，即所有音调的所有谐波都是共同基频的整数倍的程度。在这里，我们调查(1)婴儿是否更喜欢节拍较少的声音和更和谐的声音，以及(2)他们对和声的偏好是否是因为他们更喜欢没有节拍或更喜欢和声。因为对和声和不和谐的感知是音乐音高结构的基础，所以了解早期偏好的性质以及它们是如何被经验修改的，对于理解音乐的感知起源是至关重要的。(3)发展对音乐调性和经验的影响的敏感性。我们已经证明，婴儿和儿童学习音乐的音高结构是有序的，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，因为蹒跚学步的儿童(2-3岁)很难测试(不会参加婴儿程序，也不容易按照说明和回答问题)。然而，关键的发展发生在蹒跚学步的时候。我们为蹒跚学步的孩子提出了两种方法。在其中一项研究中，我们考察了幼儿是否会选择会跳舞的手偶，例如，选择随着调性音乐跳舞的手偶，而不是那些随着无调性音乐跳舞的手偶。第二种方法包括测量脑电对音调结构破坏的反应。这些发现将显著增加我们对音乐发展的理解，并提供实用信息，例如儿童在什么年龄从什么类型的音乐课中受益。