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

因为婴儿的视力很差，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展过程和经验在形成过程中的作用。研究将集中在四个方面。(1)经验对节奏学习的影响。先前的研究表明，婴儿可以处理复杂的音乐节奏，但如果他们的文化音乐主要包含简单的节奏，就像西方音乐的情况一样，婴儿在一岁时就会失去这种能力。在这里，我们研究了早期音乐经验的作用，以及大脑可塑性是否使西方幼儿在接触复杂节奏时能够快速学习复杂节奏。这项工作对于理解音乐发展和大脑可塑性非常重要。(2)了解婴儿如何组合声音成分形成可识别的听觉对象。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。了解这种能力是如何发展的，对于理解与中枢听觉处理障碍有关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)区分和识别声音。成功的社会交往依赖于通过声音识别人。我们将研究出生后第一年语音识别的发展变化，研究人类声音经验在这一过程中的作用。(4)音乐训练对注意力的影响。许多研究表明，音乐课对语言和数学技能等其他认知领域有益。在这里，我们调查了这种情况的发生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。这项研究可以阐明为什么音乐训练是有益的，并为儿童的利益教育政策提供信息。

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.