Japanese infants hear sounds based on native language by 14 months

(Original Link - http://japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/japanese-infants-hear-sounds-based-on-native-language-by-14-months)

TOKYO —

Japanese infants, by the time they are 14 months old, are believed to have tuned their perception to how sounds are sequenced in their native language even before learning its words and grammar, the Riken Brain Science Institute said Tuesday in a report on its joint studies with a French laboratory.
Involving 24 8-month-old Japanese and French infants each and as many 14 months old, the joint study found that only 14-month-old Japanese infants were unable to distinguish words with sound sequences foreign to the Japanese ear, Riken said.

The question of how infants learn to perceive and segment speech is central to the understanding of the origins and development of language, according to Riken.

Studies have shown that young infants can already distinguish patterns common to their language from those that are not, but it is not clear how the capacity relates to the highly tuned perception of speech known to occur in adults.

One way to explore the connection is through the phenomenon of ‘‘phonological illusions,’’ in which adults hear sound sequences from a foreign language as if they were ‘‘repaired’’ to fit their native tongue, Riken said.
To determine at what age such illusions first develop, the joint study tested the ability of Japanese and French infants at 8 and 14 months of age to distinguish series of utterance pairs such as ‘‘abna’’ and ‘‘abuna,’’ only the latter of which is pronounceable in Japanese.

Earlier research by the team had shown that adult Japanese perceive such utterances as the same, inserting an illusory vowel ‘‘u’’ between the cluster of consonants, Riken said. The current experiments show that while at 8 months of age, the phenomenon does not yet occur in either group, by 14 months a clear difference emerges—Japanese infants, unlike French infants, no longer perceive the distinction between these utterances unless they are presented to them in isolation.

In the Japanese language, all words are composed of either vowels only or combinations of consonants and vowels. Words that have a succession of consonants exist in the French language, but not in Japanese.

‘‘It has been thought that this repairing ability is acquired by adults after they learn many words. It is amazing that infants already hear sounds in a similar way to how adults do,’’ said Reiko Mazuka, who led Riken’s team in the study.

Babies Are Born to Dance, New Research Shows

(Original Link - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100315161925.htm)

Researchers have discovered that infants respond to the rhythm and tempo of music and find it more engaging than speech.

The findings, based on the study of infants aged between five months and two years old, suggest that babies may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music.

The research was conducted by Dr Marcel Zentner, from the University of York's Department of Psychology, and Dr Tuomas Eerola, from the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyvaskyla.

Dr Zentner said: "Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants.

"We also found that the better the children were able to synchronize their movements with the music the more they smiled.

"It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition. One possibility is that it was a target of natural selection for music or that it has evolved for some other function that just happens to be relevant for music processing."

Infants listened to a variety of audio stimuli including classical music, rhythmic beats and speech. Their spontaneous movements were recorded by video and 3D motion-capture technology and compared across the different stimuli.

Professional ballet dancers were also used to analyse the extent to which the babies matched their movement to the music.

The findings are published March 15 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.

The research was part-funded by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.