Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 11;16(3):e0247430. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247430. eCollection 2021.
Recent evidence reveals a precocious link between language and cognition in human infants: listening to their native language supports infants' core cognitive processes, including object categorization, and does so in a way that other acoustic signals (e.g., time-reversed speech; sine-wave tone sequences) do not. Moreover, language is not the only signal that confers this cognitive advantage: listening to vocalizations of non-human primates also supports object categorization in 3- and 4-month-olds. Here, we move beyond primate vocalizations to clarify the breadth of acoustic signals that promote infant cognition. We ask whether listening to birdsong, another naturally produced animal vocalization, also supports object categorization in 3- and 4-month-old infants. We report that listening to zebra finch song failed to confer a cognitive advantage. This outcome brings us closer to identifying a boundary condition on the range of non-linguistic acoustic signals that initially support infant cognition.
听母语有助于婴儿的核心认知过程，包括物体分类，而其他声音信号（例如，倒放的语音；正弦波音调序列）则做不到这一点。此外，语言并不是唯一赋予这种认知优势的信号：听非人类灵长类动物的发声也支持 3 至 4 个月大的婴儿进行物体分类。在这里，我们超越灵长类动物的发声，来阐明促进婴儿认知的声音信号的广度。我们想知道，听鸟鸣，另一种自然产生的动物发声，是否也能支持 3 至 4 个月大的婴儿进行物体分类。我们报告说，听斑胸草雀的歌声并没有带来认知上的优势。这一结果使我们更接近于确定最初支持婴儿认知的非语言声音信号范围的一个边界条件。
