Polver Silvia, Miller-Viacava Nicole, Fraticelli Matthieu, Gervain Judit, Lorenzi Christian
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2024 Dec 11;15:1474961. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1474961. eCollection 2024.
Infants are exposed to a myriad of sounds early in life, including caregivers' speech, songs, human-made and natural (non-anthropogenic) environmental sounds. While decades of research have established that infants have sophisticated perceptual abilities to process speech, less is known about how they perceive natural environmental sounds. This review synthesizes current findings about the perception of natural environmental sounds in the first years of life, emphasizing their role in auditory development and describing how these studies contribute to the emerging field of human auditory ecology. Some of the existing studies explore infants' responses to animal vocalizations and water sounds. Infants demonstrate an initial broad sensitivity to primate vocalizations, which narrows to human speech through experience. They also show early recognition of water sounds, with preferences for natural over artificial water sounds already at birth, indicating an evolutionary ancient sensitivity. However, this ability undergoes refinement with age and experience. The few studies available suggest that infants' auditory processing of natural sounds is complex and influenced by both genetic predispositions and exposure. Building on these existing results, this review highlights the need for ecologically valid experimental paradigms that better represent the natural auditory environments humans evolved in. Understanding how children process natural soundscapes not only deepens our understanding of auditory development but also offers practical insights for advancing environmental awareness, improving auditory interventions for children with hearing loss, and promoting wellbeing through exposure to natural sounds.
婴儿在生命早期会接触到无数的声音，包括照顾者的言语、歌曲、人造和自然（非人为）环境声音。虽然数十年的研究已经证实婴儿具有复杂的感知能力来处理言语，但对于他们如何感知自然环境声音却知之甚少。这篇综述综合了关于生命最初几年自然环境声音感知的当前研究结果，强调了它们在听觉发展中的作用，并描述了这些研究如何为新兴的人类听觉生态学领域做出贡献。一些现有研究探讨了婴儿对动物叫声和水声的反应。婴儿最初对灵长类动物叫声表现出广泛的敏感性，随着经验的积累，这种敏感性会缩小到对人类言语的敏感性。他们还表现出对水声的早期识别，出生时就更喜欢自然水声而非人工水声，这表明了一种古老的进化敏感性。然而，这种能力会随着年龄和经验的增长而不断完善。现有的少数研究表明，婴儿对自然声音的听觉处理是复杂的，并且受到遗传倾向和接触的影响。基于这些现有结果，本综述强调需要生态有效的实验范式，以更好地代表人类进化所处的自然听觉环境。了解儿童如何处理自然声景不仅能加深我们对听觉发展的理解，还能为提高环境意识、改善对听力损失儿童的听觉干预以及通过接触自然声音促进幸福感提供实际见解。
