Look who s talking: Interactions between face processing and speech perception during perceptual narrowing in monolingual and bilingual German and French infants

从一开始，婴儿就会接触到会说话的脸。在他们的第一年，他们开始适应他们的母语以及属于他们父母种族群体的面孔。在学习母语时，婴儿将使用听觉和视觉信息。尽管已经假设婴儿的语音和面部处理能力是相似的，但对这两种能力的发展仍然缺乏系统的研究。本项目的目的是通过分析婴儿语音和面部加工之间的相互作用来研究这一问题。特别是，我们将调查这种互动在多大程度上受到知觉狭窄的影响，这已经被证明发生在两种方式中，以及这种互动是否受到双语的调节。为了解决这些问题，我们将在法国和德国的单语和双语婴儿中测试母语和非母语的言语以及自己和其他种族的面孔加工。这些婴儿属于同一个高加索民族，这将使我们能够通过保持周围面部种族恒定来系统地测试不同母语的影响。我们将在4个实验中研究语音和人脸处理之间的交互作用。在第一组实验中，我们将评估当说话者的面孔属于不熟悉的种族时，以及当婴儿成长为双语时，婴儿的视听语音整合是否有所不同。在第二组中，我们将研究语言在婴儿隐含种族偏见出现中的作用。我们首先想要发现，母语是否更有可能与婴儿自己的种族有关，反之亦然，以及这种联系是否会影响婴儿对他人的信心。我们在婴儿实验室之间独特的法德合作使我们有可能用两种类型不同的语言和单一的人脸类别来解决这些关于婴儿视听处理的关键问题。它还将使我们能够接触到大量的双语婴儿，我们预计其中有足够数量的法德双语者。BabyFaceSpeech项目的预期理论成果是对语音和面孔加工在发育过程中的相互作用以及双语对多模式知觉缩小的调节作用进行了全面的描述。我们的项目也有临床应用，因为它将提供标准来评估有言语和面部处理延迟和障碍风险的婴儿和儿童(例如特定语言障碍、自闭症谱系综合症、发育性失认或发育性语音失认)。BabyFaceSpeech项目还具有社会效果，因为它将有助于理清影响隐性种族偏见发展的因素。

From the beginning of life infants are exposed to talking faces. During their first year they become attuned to their native language as well as to faces which belong to their parents ethnic group. In learning their native language, infants will use auditory as well as visual information. Although parallels in infants speech and face processing have been assumed, systematic research on the development of both abilities is still lacking. It is the aim of this project to investigate this issue by analyzing the interaction between speech and face processing in infants. In particular, we will investigate the extent to which this interaction is shaped by perceptual narrowing, which has been shown to take place in both modalities, and whether this interaction is modulated by bilingualism. To address these questions we will test native vs. non-native speech and own- vs. other-race face processing in French and German mono- and bilingual infants. These infants belong to the same Caucasian ethnic group, which will allow us to systematically test the influence of varying native languages by keeping ambient face race constant. We will investigate the proposed interaction between speech and face processing in 4 experiments. In the first set of experiments we will assess whether infants integration of audio-visual speech differs when the faces of the speakers belong to an unfamiliar race and when infants grow up bilingually. In a second set, we will examine the role of language in the emergence of the implicit racial bias in infants. We want first to uncover if native language is more likely to be associated to infants own race and vice versa and if this association impacts infants confidence in other people. Our unique French-German collaboration between baby labs makes it possible to address these crucial questions on infants audio-visual processing in two typologically different languages with a single face category. It will also allow us to have access to a large population of bilingual infants, among which we expect a sufficient number of French-German bilinguals. The expected theoretical outcome of the BabyFaceSpeech project is a thorough account of the interaction between speech and face processing during development and of the modulatory role of bilingualism on multimodal perceptual narrowing. Our project also has clinical applications as it will provide standards to assess infants and children who are at risk for speech and face processing delays and disorders (such as specific language impairment, autism spectrum syndrome, developmental prosopagnosia or developmental phonagnosia). The BabyFaceSpeech project also has societal outcomes as it will help disentangle factors that influence the development of the implicit racial bias.