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The role of experience in children's discrimination of unfamiliar languages.

ABSTRACT: Five- and six-year-old children (n = 160) participated in three studies designed to explore language discrimination. After an initial exposure period (during which children heard either an unfamiliar language, a familiar language, or music), children performed an ABX discrimination task involving two unfamiliar languages that were either similar (Spanish vs. Italian) or different (Spanish vs. Mandarin). On each trial, participants heard two sentences spoken by two individuals, each spoken in an unfamiliar language. The pair was followed by a third sentence spoken in one of the two languages. Participants were asked to judge whether the third sentence was spoken by the first speaker or the second speaker. Across studies, both the difficulty of the discrimination contrast and the relation between exposure and test materials affected children's performance. In particular, language discrimination performance was facilitated by an initial exposure to a different unfamiliar language, suggesting that experience can help tune children's attention to the relevant features of novel languages.

SUBMITTER: Potter CE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4606017 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The role of experience in children's discrimination of unfamiliar languages.

Potter Christine E CE Saffran Jenny R JR

Frontiers in psychology 20151015

Five- and six-year-old children (n = 160) participated in three studies designed to explore language discrimination. After an initial exposure period (during which children heard either an unfamiliar language, a familiar language, or music), children performed an ABX discrimination task involving two unfamiliar languages that were either similar (Spanish vs. Italian) or different (Spanish vs. Mandarin). On each trial, participants heard two sentences spoken by two individuals, each spoken in an ...[more]

PMID: 26528230

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Project description:In the face of a potential threat to his or her child, a parent's caregiving system becomes activated, motivating the parent to protect and care for the child. However, the neural correlates of these responses are not yet well understood. The current study was a pilot study to investigate the processing of subliminally presented threatening primes and their effects on neural responses to familiar and unfamiliar children's faces. In addition, we studied potential moderating effects of empathy and childhood experiences of love-withdrawal. A total of 45 students participated in an fMRI experiment in which they were shown pictures of familiar children (pictures morphed to resemble the participant like an own child would) and unfamiliar children preceded by neutral and threatening primes. Participants completed a modified version of the Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory to measure parental love withdrawal, and the Empathic Concern scale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index to measure affective empathy. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find evidence for subliminal priming effects. However, we did find enhanced activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; involved in self-referential processing) and in face processing areas (infero-lateral occipital cortex and fusiform areas) in response to the familiar child, indicating preferential processing of these faces. Effects of familiarity in face processing areas were larger for participants reporting more love withdrawal, suggesting enhanced attention to and processing of these highly attachment relevant stimuli. Unfamiliar faces elicited enhanced activity in bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG) and other regions associated with theory of mind (ToM), which may indicate more effortful ToM processing of these faces. We discuss the potential difference between a familiarity and a caregiving effect triggered by the morphed faces, and emphasize the need for replication in parents with pictures of their "real" own child.

Dataset Information

The role of experience in children's discrimination of unfamiliar languages.

Publications

The role of experience in children's discrimination of unfamiliar languages.

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