Naïve language expert : : How infants discover units and regularities in speech / / topic editors, Jutta L. Mueller and Claudia Männel.

• Superior document: Frontiers Research Topics
• TeilnehmendeR: Männel, Claudia, 1973-; Mueller, Jutta L., 1974-
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Frontiers Research Topics
• Physical Description: 1 electronic resource (156 p.)

The advent of behavior-independent measures of cognition and major progress in experimental designs have led to substantial advances in the investigation of infant language learning mechanisms. Research in the last two decades has shown that infants are very efficient users of perceptual and statistical cues in order to extract linguistic units and regular patterns from the speech input. This has lent support for learning-based accounts of language acquisition that challenge traditional nativist views. Still, there are many open questions with respect to when and how specific patterns can be learned and the relevance of different types of input cues. For example, first steps have been made to identify the neural mechanisms supporting on-line extraction of words and statistical regularities from speech. Here, the temporal cortex seems to be a major player. How this region works in concert with other brain areas in order to detect and store new linguistic units is a question of broad interest. In this Research Topic of Frontiers in Language Sciences, we bring together experimental and review papers across linguistic domains, ranging from phonology to syntax that address on-line language learning in infancy. Specifically, we focused on papers that explore one of the following or related questions: How and when do infants start to segment linguistic units from the speech input and discover the regularities according to which they are related to each other? What is the role of different linguistic cues during these acquisition stages and how do different kinds of information interact? How are these processes reflected in children’s behavior, how are they represented in the brain and how do they unfold in time? What are the characteristics of the acquired representations as they are established, consolidated and stored in long-term memory? By bringing together behavioral and neurophysiological evidence on language learning mechanisms, we aim to contribute to a more complete picture of the expeditious and highly efficient early stages of language acquisition and their neural implementation.

Table of Contents

The Naïve Language Expert: Introduction to the Research Topic / Jutta L. Mueller and Claudia Männel -- Infants' Learning of Phonological Status / Amanda Seidl and Alejandrina Cristia -- Disentangling the Influence of Salience and Familiarity on Infant Word Learning: Methodological Advances / Heather Bortfeld, Katie Shaw and Nicole Depowski -- Statistical Learning Across Development: Flexible Yet Constrained / Lauren Krogh, Haley A. Vlach and Scott P. Johnson -- Advancing our Understanding of the Link Between Statistical Learning and Language Acquisition: The Need for Longitudinal Data / Joanne Arciuli and Janne von Koss Torkildsen -- Inights on NIRS Sensitivity From a Cross-Linguistic Study on the Emergence of Phonological Grammar / Yasuyo Minagawa-Kawai, Alejandrina Cristia, Bria Long, Inga Vendelin, Yoko Hakuno, Michel Dutat, Luca Filippin, Dominique Cabrol and Emmanuel Dupoux -- Predictive Brain Signals of Linguistic Development / Valesca Kooijman, Caroline Junge, Elizabeth K. Johnson, Peter Hagoort and Anne Cutler -- How Each Prosodic Boundary Cue Matters: Evidence From German Infants / Caroline Wellmann, Julia Holzgrefe, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Isabell Wartenburger and Barbara Höhle -- Prosodic Cues to Word Order: What Level of Representation? / Carline Bernard and Judit Gervain -- Rapid Gains in Segmenting Fluent Speech When Words Match the Rhythmic Unit: Evidence From Infants Acquiring Syllable-Timed Languages / Laura Bosch, Melània Figueras, Maria Teixidó and Marta Ramon-Casas -- Discovering Words in Fluent Speech: The Contribution of Two Kinds of Statistical Information / Erik D. Thiessen and Lucy C. Erickson -- Statistical Speech Segmentation and Word Learning in Parallel: Scaffolding From Child-Directed Speech / Daniel Yurovsky, Chen Yu and Linda B. Smith -- The Segmentation of Sub-Lexical Morphemes in English-Learning 15-Month-Olds / Toben H. Mintz -- Infants Generalize Representations of Statistically Segmented Words Katharine Graf Estes -- Acoustic Analyses of Speech Sounds and Rhythms in Japanese- and English-Learning Infants / Yuko Yamashita, Yoshitaka Nakajima, Kazuo Ueda, Yohko Shimada, David Hirsh, Takeharu Seno and Benjamin Alexander Smith.