ArticlePerspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science2023
Does Electrophysiological Maturation Shape Language Acquisition?
Article in Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural encoding of infant-directed speech during infants' first year of life.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cortical Tracking of Speech Across Rhythm Classes in English-, French-, and Japanese-Learning 4- and 8-Month-Old Infants.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Speech Neurophysiology in Realistic Contexts: Big Hype or Big Leap?The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Review
- Bilingual Exposure and Sex Shape Developmental Trajectories of Brain Responses to Speech-Sound Features in Infants.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- The link between non-human primate vocalizations and cognition is not constrained by maturation alone: Evidence from healthy preterm infants.Cognition · 2024Article
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- Phonological acquisition depends on the timing of speech sounds: Deconvolution EEG modeling across the first five years.Science advances · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
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Abstract
Infants master temporal patterns of their native language at a developmental trajectory from slow to fast: Shortly after birth, they recognize the slow acoustic modulations specific to their native language before tuning into faster language-specific patterns between 6 and 12 months of age. We propose here that this trajectory is constrained by neuronal maturation-in particular, the gradual emergence of high-frequency neural oscillations in the infant electroencephalogram. Infants' initial focus on slow prosodic modulations is consistent with the prenatal availability of slow electrophysiological activity (i.e., theta- and delta-band oscillations). Our proposal is consistent with the temporal patterns of infant-directed speech, which initially amplifies slow modulations, approaching the faster modulation range of adult-directed speech only as infants' language has advanced sufficiently. Moreover, our proposal agrees with evidence from premature infants showing maturational age is a stronger predictor of language development than ex utero exposure to speech, indicating that premature infants cannot exploit their earlier availability of speech because of electrophysiological constraints. In sum, we provide a new perspective on language acquisition emphasizing neuronal development as a critical driving force of infants' language development.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.