ERP indices of Speech Processing in Infants and Toddlers: Maturational Changes from 3 months to 7 years of age

Karen Garrido-Nag, Yan H. Yu, Hia Datta, Nancy Vidal, Valerie L. Shafer
The Graduate Center, CUNY
INTRODUCTION Participants:
Background: Age Monolingual Spanish-English Bilingual
P100 Monolingual Bilingual
3-5 months 6 7

3-5month
Discrimination and categorization of speech sounds are shaped by 6-13 months 16 13
early language experience (Werker & Tees, 1984). 16-26 months 7 5
Early exposure to various distributions of speech sounds and 27-47 months 6 7
syllable structures affects development of phonological categories. 4-5 yrs 5 5
Research examining speech processing in children & adults with 6-7 yrs 8 8
early exposure to more than one language indicates the following:
Speech discrimination in bilingual vs. monolingual infants
develops differently (Bosch & Sebastian-Galles,1997; Burns, Werker & McVee, P100 Monolingual Bilingual RESULTS
2002; Sundra & Polka, 2004).
Speech processing in bilinguals is different from that of

6-13month
monolinguals even when bilinguals acquire L2 before 4-5 years of
age (Garrido-Nag, Hisagi & Shafer, In Prep).
Whether speech processing in adults with L2 exposure during the
first year of life differs from their monolingual peers is yet to be
resolved (Navarra, Sebastian-Galles & Soto-Faraco, 2005; Garrido-Nag et al., In Prep).
Developmental changes: The MMN has been found to decrease
with latency by 11 msec/yr from 4 to 10 yr of age with no
P100
developmental change in MMN amplitude (Shafer, Morr, Kurtzberg, 2000).
The latencies of the obligatory P100 component systematically shifted
earlier with increasing age, as expected (see Morr, et al., 2002).
All age groups of infants, toddlers and young children showed
discriminative components on the speech contrast pair.
The younger children(< 47months) generally showed positive MMRs.
The 4-5 year olds were more variable. Some showed negative and
others showed positive MMRs.
Monolingual Bilingual
The 6-7 year olds showed negative MMRs (i.e., MMN).
Some children in younger age groups showed a second, later positivity

16-26month
Purpose: than the MMR.
A portion of children in the older age groups showed a late negativity
To investigate the maturational changes in the spatial-temporal (LN). This LN has been seen in other studies with children (e.g.
patterns of the brains obligatory and mismatch responses (MMR) Shafer, et al., 2005).
to speech input. No differences were observed between monolinguals and bilinguals for
To determine the effect of language experience on speech the obligatory P100.
discrimination of the English /I-e/ phoneme contrast in monolingual Monolinguals showed larger MMRs, particularly at right sites.
and bilingual participants. Older bilinguals (2;4-7 years) showed a larger LN than monolinguals,
P100 Monolingual Bilingual particularly at F4.
Hypotheses:
27-47month

Latencies of obligatories and MMRs will become earlier with DISCUSSIONS

increasing age.
The positive MMR will decline until 4 years of age and be replaced AGE
by a negative MMR The latencies of the obligatory components index maturation of the
Language experience will influence MMR, but not obligatory auditory system in infants and children with decreasing latencies
responses. possibly related to increasing myelination.
Infants and toddlers show a positive MMR in contrast to children who
P100 Monolingual Bilingual
begin showing a negative MMN around age 4. More specifically,
METHODOLOGY
4-5years old

Stimuli - The amplitude of the positive MMR decreased with age, up to 4

years of age.
Two phonetically similar vowels: /I/ (F1 500, F2 2160) as in bit
- By age four, the positive MMR had disappeared in some children,
and // (F1 650, F2 1980) as in bet,
and is replaced by a negativity which is consistent in topography with
250 milliseconds in duration the adult mismatch negativity (MMN).
Created from natural speech, and re-synthesized by Analysis - By age six, the adult-like MMN is consistently present in all
Synthesis Laboratory version 3.20 children.
Stimuli presented in a modified-oddball paradigm (trains of 10 trials) P100 The positive MMR may index orienting to the change and thus be
Monolingual Bilingual
through E-Prime v.1.0 at 72 dB SPL through 2 loudspeakers related to the P3a. It also may mask the negative MMR as suggested
6-7years old

SOA of 650 milliseconds & intertrain interval of 1500 ms by Morr, et al., 2002.
Standard // 80% (stim 9) & Deviant /I/ 20% (stim 3) A late negative (LN; 500-800 ms) discriminative response starts to
appear at the age of 18 months.
Task:
Listened to auditory stimuli while attending to a video or toys LANGUAGE
Both monolingual and bilingual groups show MMRs, however, the
Electrophysiological procedures: monolingual group has more robust MMRs than the bilingual group.
Neural activity recorded from 62 channels using Geodesic The monolingual group demonstrates MMRs at both left and right
Software 4.0 referenced to Cz hemispheres, while the bilingual group shows a left dominant MMRs.
Re-referenced to Average reference; Sampling rate: 250 Hz
Research supported by: NIH HD 46193. Email: vshafer@gc.cuny.edu