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Social Interaction in Infants’ Learning of Second-Language Phonetics: An Exploration of Brain–Behavior Relations

Year: 2015

Type: article

Abstract: Infants learn phonetic information from a second language with live-person presentations, but not television or audio-only recordings. To understand the role of social interaction in learning a second language, we examined infants' joint attention with live, Spanish-speaking tutors and used a neural measure of phonetic learning. Infants' eye-gaze behaviors during Spanish sessions at 9.5-10.5 months of age predicted second-language phonetic learning, assessed by an event-related potential measure of Spanish phoneme discrimination at 11 months. These data suggest a powerful role for social interaction at the earliest stages of learning a new language.

Source: Developmental Neuropsychology

DOI: 10.1080/87565641.2015.1014487

Authors: Barbara T. Conboy, Rechele Brooks, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Patricia K. Kuhl

Institutions: University of Redlands, University of Washington

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development