Friedrich Manuela, Herold Birgit, Friederici Angela D
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Cortex. 2009 May;45(5):662-76. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2008.06.014. Epub 2008 Nov 8.
The early acquisition of native language prosody is assumed to ease infants' language development. In a longitudinal setting we investigated whether the early processing of native and non-native language word stress patterns is associated with children's subsequent language skills. ERP data of 71 four- and five-month-old infants were retrospectively grouped according to children's verbal performance in a language test at 2.5 years. Children who displayed age-adequate expressive language skills later in development showed both an early and a late negative mismatch response (MMR) when processing the native language stress pattern as deviant in a passive oddball design. Children with poor language skills later in development did not show these negativities. Both groups displayed an infant-specific positive MMR to the non-native language deviant. This positivity was enhanced and prolonged in children who showed poor language skills later in development as compared to children who showed normal language skills. The results indicate that variability in expressive language development has precursors in infants' ERP correlates of word stress processing.
母语韵律的早期习得被认为有助于婴儿的语言发展。在一项纵向研究中，我们调查了母语和非母语单词重音模式的早期处理是否与儿童随后的语言技能相关。根据71名4个月和5个月大婴儿在2.5岁时语言测试中的言语表现，对他们的ERP数据进行了回顾性分组。在发展后期表现出与年龄相符的表达性语言技能的儿童，在被动奇偶数设计中将母语重音模式视为异常时，会表现出早期和晚期负性失匹配反应（MMR）。在发展后期语言技能较差的儿童则没有表现出这些负性反应。两组对非母语异常刺激均表现出婴儿特有的正性MMR。与语言技能正常的儿童相比，在发展后期语言技能较差的儿童的这种正性反应增强且持续时间更长。结果表明，表达性语言发展的变异性在婴儿单词重音处理的ERP相关指标中有先兆。
