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Development of language-specific phoneme representations in the infant brain - Nature Neuroscience

  • ️Näätänen, Risto
  • ️Tue Sep 01 1998
  • Scientific Correspondence
  • Published: September 1998

Nature Neuroscience volume 1, pages 351–353 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

Studies using behavioral methods, such as head-turning experiments, in which children are conditioned to turn their heads toward the sound source when they detect a change in the sound, have shown that environment has an important effect on how infants perceive language1,2,3,4. Young infants are able to discriminate almost all phonetic contrasts, whereas older infants discriminate better between phonemes that occur in the language that they normally hear, rather than foreign-language phonemes. Here we demonstrate the development of language-specific 'memory traces' in the brains of the same group of infants between six months and one year of age.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland. We thank P. Alku for producing the stimuli and Sanna Kurjenluoma, Nina Penttinen and Marieke Saher for data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology University of Helsinki, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, FIN-00014, Finland

    Marie Cheour, Rita Ceponiene, Anne Lehtokoski, Kimmo Alho & Risto Näätänen

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia

    Aavo Luuk & Jüri Allik

  3. BioMag laboratory, P.O.Box 508, HYKS, 00029, Finland

    Kimmo Alho & Risto Näätänen

Authors

  1. Marie Cheour

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  2. Rita Ceponiene

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  3. Anne Lehtokoski

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  4. Aavo Luuk

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  5. Jüri Allik

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  6. Kimmo Alho

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  7. Risto Näätänen

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marie Cheour.

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Cite this article

Cheour, M., Ceponiene, R., Lehtokoski, A. et al. Development of language-specific phoneme representations in the infant brain. Nat Neurosci 1, 351–353 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/1561

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  • Received: 05 June 1998

  • Accepted: 23 July 1998

  • Issue Date: September 1998

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1561