development of speech perception

Question 1

Basic views of empiricm vs nativism

Answer 1

Empiricism (skinner 57)– verbal behaviour is learnt from conditioning and learning, correcting and reinforcing
Nativism (Chomsky 57)- innate abilities to process speech, blue print to map language to; behaviour models dont work because of poverty of stimulus problems

Question 2

What implies perception starts in-utero?

Answer 2

sound travels through amniotic fluid; especially prosodic features. babies prefer mother’s voice pitch, mother’s voice preferred 1 day after birth, distinguish native vs non-native intonation (not phonemes) straight after birth, and recognise stories read to them in womb

Question 3

what methods can be used to test in utero

Answer 3

auditory systems develop by 6 months gestation. Doppler ultrasound: measure heart rate after habituation to a novel sound

Question 4

What do studies show babies are able to do during gestation?

Answer 4

sound discrimination (36-40 weeks)
discrimination /i/ and /a/ (zimmer 93)
reverse syllables, gender voice, piano notes (lecanker 87, 93, 00)

Question 5

Kiselevsky 10

Answer 5

in utero, through habituation, infants show neural networks sensitive to properties of mother’s voice, language and music formation.

Question 6

What behavioural measurement techniques can be used after birth?

Answer 6

Elicit a definite action in response to a sound or change

• non-nutritive sucking
• conditioned head turn
• preferential looking

Question 7

non-nutritive sucking

Answer 7

sucking makes a sound which get bored and reduce sucking (habituation), when change perceived sucking rate increases

Question 8

conditioned head turn

Answer 8

6-11m babies; conditioned to turn head and look towards a look of toy in response to hear a different sound

• measure discrimination sounds
• two- choice procedures (for identification)

Question 9

preferential looking

Answer 9

look in a certain direction of preference of a number of different displays– measure total looking time.

Question 10

what imaging measurement techniques can be used after birth?

Answer 10

ERP (oddball paradigm, MMN, P300) fMRI

Question 11

Event related potentials

Answer 11

record electronic signals from skull cap; EEG waves have a good temporal resolution

• different signals indicate different things (N400); and relate to timed event (eg if late then late stage of processing)
• problems with blinking.

Question 12

what is the ‘Oddball paradigm’

Answer 12

low probability target items intermixed with high probability non-target items

Question 13

MMN and P300

Answer 13

Mismatched negativity response: neurologically discriminate between 2 sounds
p300 reflects stimulus evaluation or categorisation

Question 14

fMRI

Answer 14

detects differences in blood flow activation – good spatial resolution, but issues from noisy machine and keeping head still

Question 15

Elmas 71 (innateness)

Answer 15

high sensitivity to phonemic distinctions and low-sensitivity to within category distinctions
at 1 + 4m able to hear cross category differences but not within category–
natavist account ‘speech mode of perception’

Question 16

Kuhl and Meltzoff 82

Answer 16

AV correspondance– preferential looking at 4.5m: preferred face and articulation congruency; so babies learn congruence quickly

Question 17

Werker and tees 84

Answer 17

By 6months babies are attuned to native phoneme categories and lose the ability to discriminate

Question 18

Two types of studying development?

Answer 18

cross sectional (measure different age children at the same time- cohort effects) or longitudinal (measure same children at different times- no cohort effects)

Question 19

Partanen et al 2013

Answer 19

exposed to sounds in utero, and showed enhanced brain activity (MMR) in response to pitch change; sig cor. between amount of prenatal exposure and activity; elarning effect generalised to other sounds not in training material– neural commitment tuned to speech features and memory representations