Co-development of face and speech processing in infancy

婴儿一出生就会遇到的最重要的社会刺激是面孔。这样的面孔不仅会移动，还会说话。从移动和说话的面孔中处理信息的能力为典型的发育奠定了关键的基础，而早期无法做到这一点会导致连锁的负面后果(例如自闭症)。尽管研究人员广泛研究了面孔处理和语音处理在婴儿期的发展，但很少有人研究这两者之间的相互作用。在我们最新发现的基础上，拟议的研究计划旨在弥合这一重大的知识差距。我们将系统地研究婴儿对面孔处理的学习如何影响他们的语音处理学习，反之亦然，以及面孔和语言经验在形成这种共同发展中的作用。为此，我们将采取多方法的方法，使用习惯化-去习惯化，眼睛跟踪，和功能性近红外光谱方法。我们将评估对不同种族和语言面孔的不同暴露的婴儿区分自己和其他种族面孔以及母语和非母语语音的能力。这项研究将首次提供一组系统和多层次的数据，将婴儿在面部和语音处理过程中的行为表现与视觉扫描和神经活动联系起来。我们的发现将弥补在行为和神经水平上关于面孔和言语知觉早期共同发展的知识的显著差距。他们将阐明两个知觉领域之间发展相互作用的性质，以及不同经验在塑造早期跨模式发展中的作用。我们的研究还将为未来的研究奠定基础，将早期的不同面孔和语言经验与儿童时期的后来发展联系起来。此外，我们的研究将为理解人脸和语音处理(例如自闭症)的非典型共同发展提供规范的数据。

The most important social stimuli infants encounter as soon as they are born are faces. Such faces not only move but also talk. The ability to process information from moving and talking faces lay the crucial foundation for typical development, whereas early inability to do so leads to cascading negative consequences (e.g., autism). Whereas researchers have extensively studied the development of face processing and that of speech processing in infancy, few have examined the interaction between the two. Building on our recent discoveries, the proposed program of research aims to bridge this significant gap in knowledge. We will examine systematically how infants' learning of face processing affects their learning of speech processing and vice versa, as well as the role of face and language experience in shaping such co-development. To this end, we will take a multi-method approach by using habituation-dishabituation, eye tracking, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy methodologies. We will assess the abilities to discriminate own- vs. other-race faces and native vs. non-native speech sounds in infants with differential exposures to the faces of different races and languages. This research will provide, for the first time, a systematic and multi-level set of data to link behavioural performance to visual scanning to neural activities in infants during face and speech processing. Our findings will bridge a significant gap in knowledge regarding the early co-development of face and speech perception at the behavioural and neural levels. They will elucidate the nature of developmental interaction between the two perceptual domains and the role of differential experiences in shaping early cross-modal development. Our research will also lay the foundation for future research to link early differential face and language experiences to later developments throughout childhood. Further, our research will provide normative data for understanding the atypical co-development of face and speech processing (e.g., autism).