Auditory development and the role of experience in infants and young children

由于幼儿视力不佳，听力对于了解世界和与照顾者互动很重要。听觉也是语言和音乐信息的主要载体。这项研究的首要目标是了解听觉发育过程以及经验在塑造这些过程中的作用。这项研究将集中在四个方面。(1)经验对学习节奏的影响。以前的研究表明，幼儿能够处理复杂的音乐节奏，但如果他们文化中的音乐主要包含简单节奏，就像西方音乐一样，婴儿在一岁时就会失去这种能力。在这里，我们调查早期音乐经验的作用，以及大脑的可塑性是否使西方幼儿在接触到它们时能够迅速学习复杂的节奏。这项工作对于理解音乐发展和大脑可塑性很重要。(2)理解婴儿如何将声音成分组合成可识别的听觉物体。就像婴儿通过在视觉场景中看到物体来学习识别物体一样，他们必须学会识别物体发出的声音，即使几个物体同时发出声音也是如此。了解这种能力是如何发展的，对于了解中枢听觉处理障碍所涉及的缺陷以及儿童如何在嘈杂的环境(如教室)中学习至关重要。(3)识别和识别声音。成功的社交依赖于通过人们的声音来识别他们。我们将研究出生后第一年语音识别的发展变化，研究人类声音体验在这一过程中的作用。(4)音乐训练对注意的影响。许多研究表明，音乐课对语言和数学技能等其他认知领域也有好处。在这里，我们调查这种情况是否因为学习演奏乐器训练了注意力技能，从而提高了许多领域的学习能力。这项研究可以阐明音乐训练有益于儿童的原因，并为儿童的教育政策提供参考。

Because vision is poor in young infants, hearing is important for learning about the world and interacting with caregivers. The auditory sense is also the main carrier of linguistic and musical information. The overarching goal of the research is to understand auditory developmental processes and the role of experience in shaping them. The research will focus on four areas. (1) Effects of experience on learning rhythms. Previous research indicates that young infants can process complex musical rhythms, but that infants lose this ability by one year of age if the music of their culture contains predominantly simple rhythms, as is the case with Western music. Here we investigate the role of early musical experience and whether brain plasticity enables Western toddlers to quickly learn complex rhythms if exposed to them. This work is important for understanding musical development and brain plasticity. (2) Understanding how infants combine sound components to form identifiable auditory objects. Just as infant learn to recognize objects by seeing them in visual scenes, they must learn to recognize the sounds that objects make, even when several objects are sounding at the same time. Understanding how this ability develops is critical for understanding the deficits involved in central auditory processing disorders and how children learn in noisy environments such as classrooms. (3) Discriminating and recognizing voices. Successful social interaction depends on recognizing people by their voices. We will investigate developmental changes in voice recognition over the first year after birth, examining the role of experience with human voices in this process. (4) Effects of musical training on attention. A number of studies suggest that music lessons are beneficial for other cognitive domains such as language and mathematical skill. Here we investigate whether this occurs because learning to play a musical instrument trains attentional skills that enhance learning across many domains. This research could elucidate the reasons why musical training is beneficial, and inform educational policy for the benefit of children.