1
|
Gómez-Vicente V, Esquiva G, Lancho C, Benzerdjeb K, Jerez AA, Ausó E. Importance of Visual Support Through Lipreading in the Identification of Words in Spanish Language. LANGUAGE AND SPEECH 2024:238309241270741. [PMID: 39189455 DOI: 10.1177/00238309241270741] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/28/2024]
Abstract
We sought to examine the contribution of visual cues, such as lipreading, in the identification of familiar (words) and unfamiliar (phonemes) words in terms of percent accuracy. For that purpose, in this retrospective study, we presented lists of words and phonemes (adult female healthy voice) in auditory (A) and audiovisual (AV) modalities to 65 Spanish normal-hearing male and female listeners classified in four age groups. Our results showed a remarkable benefit of AV information in word and phoneme recognition. Regarding gender, women exhibited better performance than men in both A and AV modalities, although we only found significant differences for words but not for phonemes. Concerning age, significant differences were detected in word recognition in the A modality between the youngest (18-29 years old) and oldest (⩾50 years old) groups only. We conclude visual information enhances word and phoneme recognition and women are more influenced by visual signals than men in AV speech perception. On the contrary, it seems that, overall, age is not a limiting factor for word recognition, with no significant differences observed in the AV modality.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Gema Esquiva
- Department of Optics, Pharmacology and Anatomy, University of Alicante, Spain; Alicante Institute for Health and Biomedical Research (ISABIAL), Spain
| | - Carmen Lancho
- Data Science Laboratory, University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
| | | | | | - Eva Ausó
- Department of Optics, Pharmacology and Anatomy, University of Alicante, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Menn KH, Männel C, Meyer L. Does Electrophysiological Maturation Shape Language Acquisition? PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2023; 18:1271-1281. [PMID: 36753616 PMCID: PMC10623610 DOI: 10.1177/17456916231151584] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/10/2023]
Abstract
Infants master temporal patterns of their native language at a developmental trajectory from slow to fast: Shortly after birth, they recognize the slow acoustic modulations specific to their native language before tuning into faster language-specific patterns between 6 and 12 months of age. We propose here that this trajectory is constrained by neuronal maturation-in particular, the gradual emergence of high-frequency neural oscillations in the infant electroencephalogram. Infants' initial focus on slow prosodic modulations is consistent with the prenatal availability of slow electrophysiological activity (i.e., theta- and delta-band oscillations). Our proposal is consistent with the temporal patterns of infant-directed speech, which initially amplifies slow modulations, approaching the faster modulation range of adult-directed speech only as infants' language has advanced sufficiently. Moreover, our proposal agrees with evidence from premature infants showing maturational age is a stronger predictor of language development than ex utero exposure to speech, indicating that premature infants cannot exploit their earlier availability of speech because of electrophysiological constraints. In sum, we provide a new perspective on language acquisition emphasizing neuronal development as a critical driving force of infants' language development.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Katharina H. Menn
- Research Group Language Cycles, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- International Max Planck Research School on Neuroscience of Communication: Function, Structure, and Plasticity, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Claudia Männel
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lars Meyer
- Research Group Language Cycles, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- Clinic for Phoniatrics and Pedaudiology, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Feijoo S, Amadó A, Sidera F, Aguilar-Mediavilla E, Serrat E. Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1205294. [PMID: 37575436 PMCID: PMC10413096 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1205294] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 07/14/2023] [Indexed: 08/15/2023] Open
Abstract
Language acquisition is influenced by the quality and quantity of input that language learners receive. In particular, early language development has been said to rely on the acoustic speech stream, as well as on language-related visual information, such as the cues provided by the mouth of interlocutors. Furthermore, children's expressive language skills are also influenced by the variability of interlocutors that provided the input. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered an unprecedented opportunity to explore the way these input factors affect language development. On the one hand, the pervasive use of masks diminishes the quality of speech, while it also reduces visual cues to language. On the other hand, lockdowns and restrictions regarding social gatherings have considerably limited the amount of interlocutor variability in children's input. The present study aims at analyzing the effects of the pandemic measures against COVID-19 on early language development. To this end, 41 children born in 2019 and 2020 were compared with 41 children born before 2012 using the Catalan adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs). Results do not show significant differences in vocabulary between pre- and post-Covid children, although there is a tendency for children with lower vocabulary levels to be in the post-Covid group. Furthermore, a relationship was found between interlocutor variability and participants' vocabulary, indicating that those participants with fewer opportunities for socio-communicative diversity showed lower expressive vocabulary scores. These results reinforce other recent findings regarding input factors and their impact on early language learning.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sara Feijoo
- Department of Llengües i Literatures Modernes i Estudis Anglesos, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Anna Amadó
- Department of Psicologia, Sociologia i Treball Social, Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain
| | - Francesc Sidera
- Department of Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
| | - Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla
- Department of Pedagogia Aplicada i Psicologia de l’Educació, Institut de Recerca i Innovació Educativa (IRIE), Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma, Spain
| | - Elisabet Serrat
- Department of Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Lozano I, López Pérez D, Laudańska Z, Malinowska‐Korczak A, Szmytke M, Radkowska A, Tomalski P. Changes in selective attention to articulating mouth across infancy: Sex differences and associations with language outcomes. INFANCY 2022; 27:1132-1153. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12496] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2021] [Revised: 05/27/2022] [Accepted: 07/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Itziar Lozano
- Department of Cognitive Psychology and Neurocognitive Science Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw Warsaw Poland
- Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Faculty of Psychology Madrid Spain
| | - David López Pérez
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland
| | - Zuzanna Laudańska
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland
| | - Anna Malinowska‐Korczak
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland
| | - Magdalena Szmytke
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw Warsaw Poland
| | - Alicja Radkowska
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw Warsaw Poland
| | - Przemysław Tomalski
- Neurocognitive Development Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Birulés J, Martinez-Alvarez A, Lewkowicz DJ, de Diego-Balaguer R, Pons F. Violation of non-adjacent rule dependencies elicits greater attention to a talker's mouth in 15-month-old infants. INFANCY 2022; 27:963-971. [PMID: 35833310 PMCID: PMC9542527 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12489] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/15/2021] [Revised: 06/06/2022] [Accepted: 06/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Infants start tracking auditory-only non-adjacent dependencies (NAD) between 15 and 18 months of age. Given that audiovisual speech, normally available in a talker's mouth, is perceptually more salient than auditory speech and that it facilitates speech processing and language acquisition, we investigated whether 15-month-old infants' NAD learning is modulated by attention to a talker's mouth. Infants performed an audiovisual NAD learning task while we recorded their selective attention to the eyes, mouth, and face of an actress while she spoke an artificial language that followed an AXB structure (tis-X-bun; nal-X-gor) during familiarization. At test, the actress spoke the same language (grammatical trials; tis-X-bun; nal-X-gor) or a novel one that violated the AXB structure (ungrammatical trials; tis-X-gor; nal-X-bun). Overall, total duration of looking did not differ during the familiar and novel test trials but the time-course of selective attention to the talker's face and mouth revealed that the novel trials maintained infants' attention to the face more than did the familiar trials. Crucially, attention to the mouth increased during the novel test trials while it did not change during the familiar test trials. These results indicate that the multisensory redundancy of audiovisual speech facilitates infants' discrimination of non-adjacent dependencies.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Joan Birulés
- Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.,Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, University Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
| | - Anna Martinez-Alvarez
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - David J Lewkowicz
- Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.,Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
| | - Ruth de Diego-Balaguer
- Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.,Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.,ICREA, Barcelona, Spain.,Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, IDIBELL, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Ferran Pons
- Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.,Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Carnevali L, Gui A, Jones EJH, Farroni T. Face Processing in Early Development: A Systematic Review of Behavioral Studies and Considerations in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic. Front Psychol 2022; 13:778247. [PMID: 35250718 PMCID: PMC8894249 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.778247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2021] [Accepted: 01/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Human faces are one of the most prominent stimuli in the visual environment of young infants and convey critical information for the development of social cognition. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mask wearing has become a common practice outside the home environment. With masks covering nose and mouth regions, the facial cues available to the infant are impoverished. The impact of these changes on development is unknown but is critical to debates around mask mandates in early childhood settings. As infants grow, they increasingly interact with a broader range of familiar and unfamiliar people outside the home; in these settings, mask wearing could possibly influence social development. In order to generate hypotheses about the effects of mask wearing on infant social development, in the present work, we systematically review N = 129 studies selected based on the most recent PRISMA guidelines providing a state-of-the-art framework of behavioral studies investigating face processing in early infancy. We focused on identifying sensitive periods during which being exposed to specific facial features or to the entire face configuration has been found to be important for the development of perceptive and socio-communicative skills. For perceptive skills, infants gradually learn to analyze the eyes or the gaze direction within the context of the entire face configuration. This contributes to identity recognition as well as emotional expression discrimination. For socio-communicative skills, direct gaze and emotional facial expressions are crucial for attention engagement while eye-gaze cuing is important for joint attention. Moreover, attention to the mouth is particularly relevant for speech learning. We discuss possible implications of the exposure to masked faces for developmental needs and functions. Providing groundwork for further research, we encourage the investigation of the consequences of mask wearing for infants' perceptive and socio-communicative development, suggesting new directions within the research field.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Laura Carnevali
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - Anna Gui
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Emily J. H. Jones
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Teresa Farroni
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Falk S, Fasolo M, Genovese G, Romero‐Lauro L, Franco F. Sing for me, Mama! Infants' discrimination of novel vowels in song. INFANCY 2021; 26:248-270. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12387] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/14/2020] [Revised: 12/08/2020] [Accepted: 12/14/2020] [Indexed: 01/22/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Simone Falk
- Department of Linguistics and Translation University of Montreal, Montreal Quebec Canada
- Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS) University of Montreal, Montreal Quebec Canada
| | - Mirco Fasolo
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging, and Clinical Sciences University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti‐Pescara Chieti Italy
| | | | - Leonor Romero‐Lauro
- Department of Psychology University of Milan‐Bicocca Milano Italy
- Neuromi Milan Center for Neuroscience Milano Italy
| | - Fabia Franco
- Department of Psychology Faculty of Science and Technology Middlesex University London London UK
| |
Collapse
|
8
|
The McGurk effect in the time of pandemic: Age-dependent adaptation to an environmental loss of visual speech cues. Psychon Bull Rev 2021; 28:992-1002. [PMID: 33443708 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-020-01852-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/19/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Seeing a person's mouth move for [ga] while hearing [ba] often results in the perception of "da." Such audiovisual integration of speech cues, known as the McGurk effect, is stable within but variable across individuals. When the visual or auditory cues are degraded, due to signal distortion or the perceiver's sensory impairment, reliance on cues via the impoverished modality decreases. This study tested whether cue-reliance adjustments due to exposure to reduced cue availability are persistent and transfer to subsequent perception of speech with all cues fully available. A McGurk experiment was administered at the beginning and after a month of mandatory face-mask wearing (enforced in Czechia during the 2020 pandemic). Responses to audio-visually incongruent stimuli were analyzed from 292 persons (ages 16-55), representing a cross-sectional sample, and 41 students (ages 19-27), representing a longitudinal sample. The extent to which the participants relied exclusively on visual cues was affected by testing time in interaction with age. After a month of reduced access to lipreading, reliance on visual cues (present at test) somewhat lowered for younger and increased for older persons. This implies that adults adapt their speech perception faculty to an altered environmental availability of multimodal cues, and that younger adults do so more efficiently. This finding demonstrates that besides sensory impairment or signal noise, which reduce cue availability and thus affect audio-visual cue reliance, having experienced a change in environmental conditions can modulate the perceiver's (otherwise relatively stable) general bias towards different modalities during speech communication.
Collapse
|
9
|
Havy M, Zesiger PE. Bridging ears and eyes when learning spoken words: On the effects of bilingual experience at 30 months. Dev Sci 2020; 24:e13002. [PMID: 32506622 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2019] [Revised: 05/15/2020] [Accepted: 05/15/2020] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
From the very first moments of their lives, infants selectively attend to the visible orofacial movements of their social partners and apply their exquisite speech perception skills to the service of lexical learning. Here we explore how early bilingual experience modulates children's ability to use visible speech as they form new lexical representations. Using a cross-modal word-learning task, bilingual children aged 30 months were tested on their ability to learn new lexical mappings in either the auditory or the visual modality. Lexical recognition was assessed either in the same modality as the one used at learning ('same modality' condition: auditory test after auditory learning, visual test after visual learning) or in the other modality ('cross-modality' condition: visual test after auditory learning, auditory test after visual learning). The results revealed that like their monolingual peers, bilingual children successfully learn new words in either the auditory or the visual modality and show cross-modal recognition of words following auditory learning. Interestingly, as opposed to monolinguals, they also demonstrate cross-modal recognition of words upon visual learning. Collectively, these findings indicate a bilingual edge in visual word learning, expressed in the capacity to form a recoverable cross-modal representation of visually learned words.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Mélanie Havy
- Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Geneva University, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Pascal E Zesiger
- Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Geneva University, Geneva, Switzerland
| |
Collapse
|
10
|
Altvater-Mackensen N, Grossmann T. Modality-independent recruitment of inferior frontal cortex during speech processing in human infants. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2018; 34:130-138. [PMID: 30391756 PMCID: PMC6969291 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2018.10.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2017] [Revised: 08/25/2018] [Accepted: 10/25/2018] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite increasing interest in the development of audiovisual speech perception in infancy, the underlying mechanisms and neural processes are still only poorly understood. In addition to regions in temporal cortex associated with speech processing and multimodal integration, such as superior temporal sulcus, left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) has been suggested to be critically involved in mapping information from different modalities during speech perception. To further illuminate the role of IFC during infant language learning and speech perception, the current study examined the processing of auditory, visual and audiovisual speech in 6-month-old infants using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our results revealed that infants recruit speech-sensitive regions in frontal cortex including IFC regardless of whether they processed unimodal or multimodal speech. We argue that IFC may play an important role in associating multimodal speech information during the early steps of language learning.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Nicole Altvater-Mackensen
- Department of Psychology, Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Tobias Grossmann
- Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, USA; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
11
|
Danielson DK, Bruderer AG, Kandhadai P, Vatikiotis-Bateson E, Werker JF. The organization and reorganization of audiovisual speech perception in the first year of life. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2017; 42:37-48. [PMID: 28970650 PMCID: PMC5621752 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.02.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
The period between six and 12 months is a sensitive period for language learning during which infants undergo auditory perceptual attunement, and recent results indicate that this sensitive period may exist across sensory modalities. We tested infants at three stages of perceptual attunement (six, nine, and 11 months) to determine 1) whether they were sensitive to the congruence between heard and seen speech stimuli in an unfamiliar language, and 2) whether familiarization with congruent audiovisual speech could boost subsequent non-native auditory discrimination. Infants at six- and nine-, but not 11-months, detected audiovisual congruence of non-native syllables. Familiarization to incongruent, but not congruent, audiovisual speech changed auditory discrimination at test for six-month-olds but not nine- or 11-month-olds. These results advance the proposal that speech perception is audiovisual from early in ontogeny, and that the sensitive period for audiovisual speech perception may last somewhat longer than that for auditory perception alone.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- D. Kyle Danielson
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, 2136
West Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
| | - Alison G. Bruderer
- School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, The University of British
Columbia, 2177 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3, Canada
| | - Padmapriya Kandhadai
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, 2136
West Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
| | - Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson
- Department of Linguistics, The University of British Columbia, 2613
West Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
| | - Janet F. Werker
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, 2136
West Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
| |
Collapse
|