Department of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK.
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.
Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 21;10(1):3225. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60074-7.
Infants' preference for faces with direct compared to averted eye gaze, and for infant-directed over adult-directed speech, reflects early sensitivity to social communication. Here, we studied whether infant-directed speech (IDS), could affect the processing of a face with direct gaze in 4-month-olds. In a new ERP paradigm, the word 'hello' was uttered either in IDS or adult-direct speech (ADS) followed by an upright or inverted face. We show that the face-specific N290 ERP component was larger when faces were preceded by IDS relative to ADS. Crucially, this effect is specific to upright faces, whereas inverted faces preceded by IDS elicited larger attention-related P1 and Nc. These results suggest that IDS generates communicative expectations in infants. When such expectations are met by a following social stimulus - an upright face - infants are already prepared to process it. When the stimulus is a non-social one -inverted face - IDS merely increases general attention.
婴儿更喜欢注视着他们的脸，而不是回避目光的脸，也更喜欢听针对婴儿的语言，而不是针对成人的语言，这反映了他们对社会交流的早期敏感性。在这里，我们研究了针对婴儿的语言（IDS）是否会影响 4 个月大婴儿对面部注视的处理。在一个新的 ERP 范式中，单词“hello”以 IDS 或成人定向语言（ADS）说出，然后是正面或倒置的脸。我们表明，与 ADS 相比，当面孔前面有 IDS 时，面孔特有的 N290 ERP 成分更大。至关重要的是，这种效应是针对正面面孔的，而当 IDS 前面的倒置面孔引起更大的注意相关 P1 和 Nc。这些结果表明，IDS 会在婴儿中产生交际期望。当后续的社会刺激——一个正面的脸——符合这些期望时，婴儿已经准备好处理它。当刺激是一个非社会性的——倒置的脸——IDS 只是增加了一般的注意力。
