University of Osnabrueck
Neurophysiological evidence for complex auditory sequence learning in early human development
The acquisition of human grammar crucially involves the detection of complex patterns in spoken language input. For example, sentences such as “The boy who smiles is called Tim” cannot be understood without the ability to relate non-adjacent linguistic elements to each other. While children start producing complex grammatical patterns in the form of small phrases and sentences only in the second year of life, sensitivity to grammatical regularities can be demonstrated much earlier using non-behaviour-dependent neurophysiological measures. I will present a series of auditory grammar learning experiments using electroencephalography (EEG) as well as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) providing evidence that infants possess the ability to detect complex sequential patterns in the auditory input already within their first half year of life. Results suggest that auditory perception strongly influences the learning ability in infants and adults and that the automatic signal-driven learning mechanism of infants develops towards attention-based learning in young adults. Further, already in early infancy, frontal cortices, which are related to functions of cognitive control in adults, play a role during grammar learning. In conclusion, the ability to detect auditory dependencies is argued to be one of the foundations of grammar acquisition, providing the concrete pattern onto which abstract syntactic functions can be mapped later on in development.
