Tracking Transitional Probabilities and Segmenting Auditory Sequences Are Dissociable Processes in Adults and Neonates

Autor/inn/en	Benjamin, Lucas; Fló, Ana; Palu, Marie; Naik, Shruti; Melloni, Lucia; Dehaene-Lambertz, Ghislaine
Titel	Tracking Transitional Probabilities and Segmenting Auditory Sequences Are Dissociable Processes in Adults and Neonates
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 26 (2023) 2, (16 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Benjamin, Lucas) ORCID (Fló, Ana)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1363-755X
DOI	10.1111/desc.13300
Schlagwörter	Neonates; Adults; Auditory Discrimination; Auditory Perception; Verbal Stimuli; Verbal Communication; Pattern Recognition; Cognitive Processes; Incidental Learning + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Neugeborenes Kind; Auditive Wahrnehmung; Akustische Wahrnehmung; Akustik; Mustererkennung; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Inzidentelles Lernen
Abstract	Since speech is a continuous stream with no systematic boundaries between words, how do pre-verbal infants manage to discover words? A proposed solution is that they might use the transitional probability between adjacent syllables, which drops at word boundaries. Here, we tested the limits of this mechanism by increasing the size of the word-unit to four syllables, and its automaticity by testing asleep neonates. Using markers of statistical learning in neonates' EEG, compared to adult behavioral performances in the same task, we confirmed that statistical learning is automatic enough to be efficient even in sleeping neonates. We also revealed that: (1) Successfully tracking transition probabilities (TP) in a sequence is not sufficient to segment it. (2) Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover words segmenting capacities. (3) Adults' and neonates' capacities to segment streams seem remarkably similar despite the difference of maturation and expertise. Finally, we observed that learning increased the overall similarity of neural responses across infants during exposure to the stream, providing a novel neural marker to monitor learning. Thus, from birth, infants are equipped with adult-like tools, allowing them to extract small coherent word-like units from auditory streams, based on the combination of statistical analyses and auditory parsing cues. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01