Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:53:56.769Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Cortical images of early language and phonetic development using near infrared spectroscopy

from Part III - Brain, language, and mathematics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Laura-Ann Petitto
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology University of Toronto Scarborough
Antonio M. Battro
Affiliation:
National Academy of Education, Argentina
Kurt W. Fischer
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Pierre J. Léna
Affiliation:
Université de Paris VII (Denis Diderot)
Get access

Summary

Overview

Educational neuroscience provides powerful tools and new knowledge to help researchers and educators to build on cognitive neuroscience to open new perspectives for education and for remediation of young children at risk. A promising new tool is Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), which can be used with very young children to explore many cognitive capacities and performances. In particular, NIRS gives solid evidence for the existence of language-specific neural networks in infants well before they can speak. For linguistic stimuli, the networks include the left superior temporal gyrus and Broca's area, areas that are strongly involved in language in older children and adults. Brain imaging research can provide new arguments and tests for a model of language acquisition based on the early endowment of specific linguistic areas. Educational neuroscience research can address many other educationally relevant questions in a similar way.

The Editors

Revolutions can start in unlikely places. Beginning around twenty years ago, researchers in hospital sub-basements began using new brain imaging technology to look inside the skulls of volunteers while they were alive and performing a variety of cognitive tasks. This exciting imaging technology, designed to detect brain areas that drank up more oxygen than others during specific cognitive tasks, was used to discover how the brain was organized and which systems of neural areas made possible the spectacular mental functions that we humans enjoy.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Educated Brain
Essays in Neuroeducation
, pp. 213 - 231
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aslin, R. N. (1987). Visual and auditory development in infancy. In Osofsky, J. D. (ed.), Handbook of Infant Development (2nd edn., pp. 5–97). Oxford, UK: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Baird, A. A., Kagan, J., Gaudette, T., Walz, K., Hershlag, N., and Boas, D. (2002). Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: Data from near infrared spectroscopy. NeuroImage, 16, 1120–1126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baker, S. A., Golinkoff, R., and Petitto, L. A. (in press). New insights into old puzzles from infants' categorical discrimination of soundless phonetic units.” Learning Languages and Development.
Baker, S. A., Groh, J. M., Cohen, Y. E., and Petitto, L. A. (submitted). The perception of soundless phonetic units in rhesus macaques. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Baker, S. A., Idsardi, W. J., Golinkoff, R., and Petitto, L. A. (2005). The perception of handshapes in American Sign Language. Memory & Cognition, 33 (5), 887–904.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baker, S., Sootsman, J., Golinkoff, R., and Petitto, L. A. (2003, April). Hearing four-month-olds' perception of handshapes in American Sign Language: No experience required. Proceedings of the Society for Research in Child Development 2003 Biennial Meeting, Tampa, FL.Google Scholar
Byrnes, J. P. and Fox, N. A. (1998). The educational relevance of research in cognitive neuroscience. Educational Psychology Review, 10(3), 297–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eimas, P. D. (1975). Auditory and phonetic coding of the cues for speech: Discrimination of the (r-l) distinction by young infants. Perception & Psychophysics, 18(5), 341–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eimas, P. D., Siqueland, E. R., Jusczyk, P., and Vigorito, J. (1971). Speech perception in infants. Science, 171, 303–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., Taeschner, T., Dunn, J., Papousek, M., Boysson-Bardies, B., and Fukui, I. (1989). A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants. Journal of Child Language, 16, 477–501.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geake, J. G. (2003). Adapting middle level educational practices to current research on brain functioning. Journal of the New England League of Middle Schools, 15, 6–12.Google Scholar
Geake, J. G.(2004). Cognitive neuroscience and education: two-way traffic or one-way street? Westminster Studies in Education, 27(1), 87– 98.Google Scholar
Geake, J. G. and Cooper, P. W. (2003). Implications of cognitive neuroscience for education. Westminster Studies in Education, 26(10), 7–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U. (2004). Neuroscience and education. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(1), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauser, M. D., Newport, E. L., and Aslin, R. N. (2001). Segmentation of the speech stream in a nonhuman primate: Statistical learning in cotton top tamarins. Cognition, 78, B53–B64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holowka, S., Brosseau-Lapré, F., and Petitto, L. A. (2002). Semantic and conceptual knowledge underlying bilingual babies' first signs and words. Language Learning, 52(2), 205–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holowka, S. and Petitto, L. A. (2002). Left hemisphere cerebral specialization for babies while babbling. Science, 297, 1515.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jusczyk, P. W. (1985). On characterizing the development of speech perception. In Mehler, J. and Fox, R. (eds.), Neonate Cognition: Beyond the Blooming, Buzzing Confusion (pp. 199–229). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W.(1997). The Discovery of Spoken Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Rosner, B. S., Cutting, J. E., Foard, C. F., and Smith, L. B. (1977). Categorical perception of non-speech sounds by 2-month-old infants. Perceptual Psychophysics, 21, 50–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kluender, K. R., Diehl, R. L., and Kileen, P. R. (1987). Japanese-quail can learn phonetic categories. Science, 237, 1195–1197.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhl, P. K. (1979). Speech perception in early infancy: Perceptual constancy for spectrally dissimilar vowel categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 66, 1669–1679.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhl, P. K.(1981). Discrimination of speech by nonhuman animals: Basic auditory sensitivities conductive to the perception of speech-sound categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 70, 340–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. and Miller, J. D. (1975). Speech perception by the chinchilla: Voiced-voiceless distinction in alveolar plosive consonants. Science, 190, 69–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhl, P. K. and Miller, J. D.(1978). Speech-perception by chinchilla: Identification functions for synthetic VOT stimuli. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 63, 905–917.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. and Padden, D. M. (1982). Enhanced discriminability at the phonetic boundaries for the voicing feature in macaques. Perceptual Psychophysics, 32, 542–550.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhl, P. K. and Padden, D. M. (1983). Enhanced discriminability at the phonetic boundaries for the place feature in macaques. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 73, 1003–1010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morse, P. A. and Snowdon, C. T. (1975). An investigation of categorical speech discrimination by rhesus monkeys. Perception & Psychophysics, 17(1), 9–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, E. S., Baker, S. and Petitto, L. A. (2003, June). Bilingual infants' categorical perception of phonetic handshapes in American Sign Language. Poster presented at the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Summer Workshop, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
O'Boyle, M. W. and Gill, H. S. (1998). On the relevance of research findings in cognitive neuroscience to educational practice. Educational Psychology Review, 10, 397–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peña, M., Maki, A., Kovacic, D., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Koizumi, H., Bouquet, F., and Mehler, J. (2003). Sounds and silence: An optical topography study of language recognition at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(20), 11702–11705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Penhune, V., Cismaru, R., Dorsaint-Pierre, R., Petitto, L. A., and Zatorre, R. (2003). The morphometry of auditory cortex in the congenitally deaf measured using MRI. NeuroImage, 20, 1215–1225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Petitto, L. A. (2005). How the brain begets language: On the neural tissue underlying human language acquisition. Chapter in McGilvray, J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky. (pp. 84–101) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petitto, L. A.(2000). On the biological foundations of human language. In Lane, H. and Emmorey, K. (eds.) The Signs of Language Revisited (pp. 447–471). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Petitto, L. A., Baker, S., Baird, A., Kovelman, I., and Norton, E. (2004, February). Near-infrared spectroscopy studies of children and adults during language processing. Presentation at the International Workshop on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, Cambridge, MA.
Petitto, L. A., Baker, S., Kovelman, I., and Shalinsky, M. (in preparation). Near-Infrared Spectroscopy studies of children and adults during language processing. Manuscript in preparation.
Petitto, L. A. and Dunbar, K. (in press). New findings from Educational Neuroscience on bilingual brains, scientific brains, and the educated mind. In Fischer, K. and Katzir, T. (eds.) Building Usable Knowledge in Mind, Brain, & Education.
Petitto, L. A. and Holowka, S. (2002). Evaluating attributions of delay and confusion in young bilinguals, Sign Language Studies, 3(1), 4–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L., and Ostry, D. (2001). Language rhythms in babies' hand movements. Nature, 413, 35–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L., Levy, B., and Ostry, D. (2004). Baby hands that move to the rhythm of language: Hearing babies acquiring sign languages babble silently on the hands. Cognition, 9, 43–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petitto, L. A., Katerelos, M., Levy, B., Gauna, K., Tétrault, K., and Ferraro, V. (2001). Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth: Implications for mechanisms underlying bilingual language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 28(2), 1–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Petitto, L. A. and Marentette, P. (1991). Babbling in the manual mode: Evidence for the ontogeny of language. Science, 251, 1493–1496.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Petitto, L. A., Zatorre, R., Gauna, K., Nikelski, E. J., Dostie, D., and Evans, A. (2000). Speech-like cerebral activity in profoundly deaf people while processing signed languages: Implications for the neural basis of human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(25), 13961–13966.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Petitto, L. A., Zatorre, R. J., Nikelski, E. J., Gauna, K., Dostie, D., and Evans, A. C. (1998). By hand or by tongue: Common cerebral blood flow activation during language processing in signed and spoken languages. NeuroImage, 7(4), 193.Google Scholar
Polka, L. and Werker, J. F. (1994). Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 421–435.Google ScholarPubMed
Ramus, F., Hauser, M. D., Miller, C., Morris, D., and Mehler, J. (2000). Language discrimination by human newborns and cotton-top tamarin monkeys. Science, 288, 349–351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., and Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274, 1926–1928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sakatani, K., Chen, S., Lichty, W., Zuo, H., and Wang, Y. P. (1999). Cerebral blood oxygenation changes induced by auditory stimulation in newborn infants measured by near infrared spectroscopy. Early Human Development, 55(3), 229–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shaywitz, S., Shaywitz, B., Pugh, K., Fulbright, R., Constable, R., Mencl, W., Shankweiler, D., et al. (1998). Functional disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95, 2636–2641.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stager, C. L. and Werker, J. F. (1997). Infants listen for more phonetic detail in speech perception than in word learning tasks. Nature, 388, 381–382.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Villringer, A. and Chance, B. (1997). Non-invasive optical spectroscopy and imaging of human brain function. Trends in Neuroscience, 20(10), 435–442.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waters, R. S. and Wilson, J. R. (1976). Speech perception by rhesus monkeys: The voicing distinction in synthesized labial and velar stop consonants. Perception and Psychophysics, 19(4), 285–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werker, J. F., Cohen, L. B., Lloyd, V. L., Casasola, M., and Stager, C. L. (1998). Acquisition of word-object associations by 14-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1289–1309.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werker, J. F. and Lalonde, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change. Developmental Psychology, 24(4) 672–683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werker, J. F. and Stager, C. L. (2000). Developmental changes in infant speech perception and early word learning: Is there a link? In Pierrehumbert, J. and Broe, M. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 5, (pp. 181–193). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. and Tees, R. C. (1983). Developmental changes across childhood in the perception of non-native speech sounds. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 37(2) 278–286.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werker, J. F. and Tees, R. C.(1999). Experiential influences on infant speech processing: Toward a new synthesis. In Spence, J. T. (ed.), Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 50 (pp. 509–535). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.Google Scholar
Zaramella, P., Freato, F., Amigoni, A., Salvadori, S., Marangoni, P., Suppjei, A., et al. (2001). Brain auditory activation measured by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in neonates. Pediatric Research, 49(2), 213–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×