Preverbal Infants Discover Statistical Word Patterns at Similar Rates as Adults: Evidence From Neural Entrainment
Abstract
The discovery of words in continuous speech is one of the first challenges faced by infants during language acquisition. This process is partially facilitated by statistical learning, the ability to discover and encode relevant patterns in the environment. Here, we used an electroencephalogram (EEG) index of neural entrainment to track 6-month-olds’ (N = 25) segmentation of words from continuous speech. Infants’ neural entrainment to embedded words increased logarithmically over the learning period, consistent with a perceptual shift from isolated syllables to wordlike units. Moreover, infants’ neural entrainment during learning predicted postlearning behavioral measures of word discrimination (n = 18). Finally, the logarithmic increase in entrainment to words was comparable in infants and adults, suggesting that infants and adults follow similar learning trajectories when tracking probability information among speech sounds. Statistical-learning effects in infants and adults may reflect overlapping neural mechanisms, which emerge early in life and are maintained throughout the life span.
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All data and stimuli for this study have been made publicly available via OSF and can be accessed at https://osf.io/6a9je/. The sample size, design, and analysis plans were preregistered at https://osf.io/wamv4. Only the preregistered electroencephalogram (EEG) analyses are reported here; the preregistration states that event-related potential (ERP) analyses would also be conducted, but we did not obtain sufficient data and thus could not run the ERP analyses. Several other minor deviations from the preregistration (related to the power analysis, the EEG entrainment analyses, and the method used to analyze looking-time scores) are detailed in the Supplemental Material available online. The complete Open Practices Disclosure for this article can be found at Supplementary Material. This article has received the badges for Open Data, Open Materials, and Preregistration. More information about the Open Practices badges can be found at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/badges.
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Action Editor: Rebecca Treiman
Editor: D. Stephen Lindsay
Author Contributions
D. Choi and L. J. Batterink contributed equally to this article. D. Choi, L. J. Batterink, A. K. Black, and J. F. Werker developed and designed the study. D. Choi and L. J. Batterink programmed the experiment and implemented the study. Infant testing and data collection were performed by D. Choi and A. K. Black. L. J. Batterink analyzed and interpreted the electroencephalogram (EEG) data. D. Choi and A. K. Black analyzed and interpreted the behavioral data. D. Choi analyzed the EEG–behavior correlation. D. Choi, L. J. Batterink, and A. K. Black drafted the manuscript. K. A. Paller and J. F. Werker provided revisions and critical feedback on the manuscript. All of the authors approved the final manuscript for publication.
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Article first published online: August 31, 2020
Issue published: September 2020
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PubMed: 32865487
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