Electrophysiological evidence for automatic phonetic processing in neonates.

G Dehaene-Lambertz; M Pena

doi:10.1097/00001756-200110080-00034

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Electrophysiological evidence for automatic phonetic processing in neonates.

G Dehaene-Lambertz·M Pena

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Abstract

At least two fundamental properties should be present in a network computing a phonetic representation: categorical perception and normalization across different utterances. Normalization processes were studied at birth by recording high density evoked potentials to strings of syllables in sleeping neonates. We compared the response to a change of phoneme when irrelevant speaker variation was present or absent. A mismatch response was recorded at the same latency in both cases, suggesting that relevant phonetic information was extracted from the irrelevant variation. Combined with our previous work showing that the mismatch response is sensitive to categorical perception in infants, this result suggests that a phonetic network like that of adults, is already present in the infant brain. Furthermore, efficient phonetic processing does not require attention.

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Acoustic Stimulation Aging Auditory Cortex Brain Mapping Electroencephalography Evoked Potentials, Auditory Female Functional Laterality Humans Infant, Newborn Male Nerve Net Reaction Time Speech Perception Verbal Behavior Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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G Dehaene-Lambertz, M Pena. 2001-10-08. Electrophysiological evidence for automatic phonetic processing in neonates.. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001756-200110080-00034

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