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      Finding phrases: On the role of co-verbal facial information in learning word order in infancy

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          Abstract

          The input contains perceptually available cues, which might allow young infants to discover abstract properties of the target language. Thus, word frequency and prosodic prominence correlate systematically with basic word order in natural languages. Prelexical infants are sensitive to these frequency-based and prosodic cues, and use them to parse new input into phrases that follow the order characteristic of their native languages. Importantly, young infants readily integrate auditory and visual facial information while processing language. Here, we ask whether co-verbal visual information provided by talking faces also helps prelexical infants learn the word order of their native language in addition to word frequency and prosodic prominence. We created two structurally ambiguous artificial languages containing head nods produced by an animated avatar, aligned or misaligned with the frequency-based and prosodic information. During 4 minutes, two groups of 4- and 8-month-old infants were familiarized with the artificial language containing aligned auditory and visual cues, while two further groups were exposed to the misaligned language. Using a modified Headturn Preference Procedure, we tested infants’ preference for test items exhibiting the word order of the native language, French, vs. the opposite word order. At 4 months, infants had no preference, suggesting that 4-month-olds were not able to integrate the three available cues, or had not yet built a representation of word order. By contrast, 8-month-olds showed no preference when auditory and visual cues were aligned and a preference for the native word order when visual cues were misaligned. These results imply that infants at this age start to integrate the co-verbal visual and auditory cues.

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          Perception of auditory-visual temporal synchrony in human infants.

          Using a habituation/test procedure, the author investigated adults' and infants' perception of auditory-visual temporal synchrony. Participants were familiarized with a bouncing green disk and a sound that occurred each time the disk bounced. Then, they were given a series of asynchrony test trials where the sound occurred either before or after the disk bounced. The magnitude of the auditory-visual temporal asynchrony threshold differed markedly in adults and infants. The threshold for the detection of asynchrony created by a sound preceding a visible event was 65 ms in adults and 350 ms in infants and for the detection of asynchrony created by a sound following a visible event was 112 ms in adults and 450 ms in infants. Also, infants did not respond to asynchronies that exceeded intervals that yielded reliable discrimination. Infants' perception of auditory-visual temporal unity is guided by a synchrony and an asynchrony window, both of which become narrower in development.
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            Auditory-visual speech integration by prelinguistic infants: perception of an emergent consonant in the McGurk effect.

            The McGurk effect, in which auditory [ba] dubbed onto [ga] lip movements is perceived as "da" or "tha," was employed in a real-time task to investigate auditory-visual speech perception in prelingual infants. Experiments 1A and 1B established the validity of real-time dubbing for producing the effect. In Experiment 2, 4 1/2-month-olds were tested in a habituation-test paradigm, in which an auditory-visual stimulus was presented contingent upon visual fixation of a live face. The experimental group was habituated to a McGurk stimulus (auditory [ba] visual [ga]), and the control group to matching auditory-visual [ba]. Each group was then presented with three auditory-only test trials, [ba], [da], and [(delta)a] (as in then). Visual-fixation durations in test trials showed that the experimental group treated the emergent percept in the McGurk effect, [da] or [(delta)a], as familiar (even though they had not heard these sounds previously) and [ba] as novel. For control group infants [da] and [(delta)a] were no more familiar than [ba]. These results are consistent with infants' perception of the McGurk effect, and support the conclusion that prelinguistic infants integrate auditory and visual speech information. Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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              Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants.

              A central problem in language acquisition is how children effortlessly acquire the grammar of their native language even though speech provides no direct information about underlying structure. This learning problem is even more challenging for dual language learners, yet bilingual infants master their mother tongues as efficiently as monolinguals do. Here we ask how bilingual infants succeed, investigating the particularly challenging task of learning two languages with conflicting word orders (English: eat an apple versus Japanese: ringo-wo taberu 'apple.acc eat'). We show that 7-month-old bilinguals use the characteristic prosodic cues (pitch and duration) associated with different word orders to solve this problem. Thus, the complexity of bilingual acquisition is countered by bilinguals' ability to exploit relevant cues. Moreover, the finding that perceptually available cues like prosody can bootstrap grammatical structure adds to our understanding of how and why infants acquire grammar so early and effortlessly.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: SoftwareRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: MethodologyRole: Software
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                11 November 2019
                2019
                : 14
                : 11
                : e0224786
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center (INCC–UMR 8002), Université Paris Descartes (Sorbonne Paris Cité), Paris, France
                [2 ] Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center (INCC–UMR 8002), CNRS, Paris, France
                [3 ] Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
                [4 ] Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
                University of the Basque Country, SPAIN
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3425-0596
                Article
                PONE-D-18-36713
                10.1371/journal.pone.0224786
                6844464
                31710615
                24da02eb-e5b6-4f87-ba52-a50c457682f0
                © 2019 de la Cruz-Pavía et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 27 December 2018
                : 22 October 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 4, Tables: 2, Pages: 15
                Funding
                Funded by: FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions - Outgoing Fellowship
                Award ID: 624972
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000038, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada;
                Award ID: RGPIN-2015-03967
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Labex EFL (FR)
                Award ID: ANR-10-LABX-0083
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001665, Agence Nationale de la Recherche;
                Award ID: ANR-15-CE37-0009-01
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: European Research Council Consolidator Grant
                Award ID: 773202 ERC-2017-COG ‘BabyRhythm’
                Award Recipient :
                This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the EU Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (2007–2013) under REA grant agreement no. [624972] awarded to ICP ( https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (RGPIN-2015-03967; http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/index_eng.asp) to J.F.W., as well as the French Investissements d’Avenir - Labex EFL program (ANR- 10-LABX-0083; http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid55551/investissements-d-avenir-projets-laboratoires-d-excellence-par-region-et-domaine.html), ANR grant (ANR-15-CE37-0009-01; http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/en/), and ERC Consolidator Grant (773202 ERC-2017-COG ‘BabyRhythm’; https://erc.europa.eu/funding/consolidator-grants) to J.G. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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