The DOI matches its Crossref record; 155 of the 172 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 20 of the 139 sources its claims cite were checked for support.
Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition
Open accessAbstract
Summary The last decade has produced an explosion in neuroscience research examining young children’s early processing of language. Noninvasive, safe functional brain measurements have now been proven feasible for use with children starting at birth. The phonetic level of language is especially accessible to experimental studies that document the innate state and the effect of learning on the brain. The neural signatures of learning at the phonetic level can be documented at a remarkably early point in development. Continuity in linguistic development from infants’ earliest brain responses to phonetic stimuli is reflected in their language and pre-reading abilities in the second, third and fifth year of life, a finding with theoretical and clinical impact. There is evidence that early mastery of the phonetic units of language requires learning in a social context. Neuroscience on early language learning is beginning to reveal the multiple brain systems that underlie the human language faculty.
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Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
This review argues that infants’ early phonetic learning involves neural commitment to native-language sound patterns, with sensitive periods and bidirectional effects on later language. It also proposes that social interaction gates computational/statistical learning, since live exposure—but not television or audio-only exposure—supported foreign-language phonetic learning in infants.
Key findings
- Noninvasive brain measures (EEG/ERP, MEG, fMRI, NIRS) can be used from infancy. ERP mismatch negativity at 7.5 months predicted later language: stronger native phonetic discrimination predicted higher language scores at 14, 18, 24, and 30 months, while stronger nonnative discrimination predicted lower later scores. Vowel discrimination at 6 months also predicted language and pre-reading skills at age 5.
- Phonetic perception changes between 6 and 12 months: nonnative discrimination declines while native discrimination increases. Japanese infants’ discrimination of English /r/–/l/ declined between 8 and 10 months, whereas American infants’ discrimination of the same contrast increased.
- Live social exposure mattered: 9-month-old American infants exposed to Mandarin in 12 live sessions over 4–5 weeks, from four speakers and about 33,000 syllables, learned a Mandarin phonetic contrast and performed comparably to same-age infants in Taiwan with 10 months of Mandarin exposure. Television or audiotape exposure produced no learning. Social engagement and gaze shifting predicted ERP measures of Spanish phonetic and word learning.
- Sensitive periods differ by language level: phonetic learning is most affected before the end of the first year, syntax flourishes between 18 and 36 months, and vocabulary expands at 18 months but is less age-restricted. Languages contain roughly 600 consonants and 200 vowels, with each language using about 40 phonemes.
Methods
- Narrative review and synthesis of behavioral and noninvasive functional brain studies in infants and children, including EEG/ERP, MEG, fMRI, and NIRS, plus comparative animal research.
- Focuses on phonetic perception, statistical learning, social interaction, bilingual experience, and critical periods; no new primary experiment is reported.
- Draws on longitudinal, training, and cross-cultural studies using behavioral discrimination tasks and neural measures such as the mismatch negativity.
Limitations
- The paper states that many questions remain about how cognitive skills and social interaction affect natural speech learning, that the precise timing of critical periods at each language level cannot yet be documented, and that understanding of the underlying brain mechanisms is still nascent.
- Evident from the text: as a narrative review, it does not describe a systematic search or report primary data, and several cited findings are in press, submitted, or in preparation, so not all evidence is peer-reviewed or published.
- Evident from the text: sample sizes and effect sizes for most cited infant studies are not provided, limiting assessment of the strength and generalizability of individual findings.
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Claims the paper makes
45 No full text of the sources · 27 Own interpretation · 18 Sources not found · 16 No basis given · 13 Not checked yet · 7 Supported · 7 Own result · 6 Partly supported · 5 Supported so far · accuracy not yet measured
Every source the paper cites for this claim was checked and supports it.
In the paper
“We are in a nascent stage of understanding the brain mechanisms underlying infants’ early flexibility with regard to the acquisition of language – their ability to acquire language by eye or by ear, and acquire one or multiple languages – and also the reduction in this initial flexibility that occurs with age, which dramatically decreases our capacity to acquire a new language as adults (Newport,”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Signatures of Early Learning
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Newport, 1990 source
The Abstract states that language performance declines when exposure begins later in life and that constraints supporting successful learning weaken with maturation. The section on second-language learning likewise reports significantly better eventual performance among those who began learning earlier; it does not claim adults cannot acquire a new language. (LLM, conf=0.88)
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Supported
The sources with a verdict support this claim; the rest weren’t checked yet, have no full text we could read, or their verdicts aren’t rated yet.
In the paper
“Reports have begun to appear on infants in the first two years of life, testing infant responses to phonemes as well as longer stretches of speech such as “motherese” and forward versus reversed sentences (Bortfeld et al., 2007; Homae et al., 2006; Peña et al., 2002; Taga and Asakawa, 2007).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Windows to the Young Brain
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Bortfeld et al., 2007 source
The Methods describe testing infants with segments of an infant-directed children’s story, and the Discussion reports NIRS responses to continuous speech. The Abstract identifies the infants as 6–9 months old. This paper supports the longer-speech portion of the collectively cited sentence; it is not being cited alone for every stimulus type listed. (LLM, conf=0.91)
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Homae et al., 2006 source
- Not matchedcites Peña et al., 2002
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Supported
The cited sources support only part of this claim — read each source’s verdict below.
In the paper
“An important discovery in the 1970s was that infants initially hear all these phonetic differences (Eimas, 1975; Eimas et al., 1971; Lasky et al., 1975; Werker and Lalonde, 1988).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Focal example: Phoneme Learning
What the sources say
- Partly supportedcites Eimas, 1975 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
The paper reports that 2- and 3-month-old infants discriminate the /r–l/ contrast, and its Discussion proposes early sensitivity to “most, if not all” phonetic distinctions. That supports broad early sensitivity, but the paper does not establish as fact that infants initially hear all phonetic differences. (LLM, conf=0.84)
- Partly supportedcites Eimas et al., 1971 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
The paper’s abstract (section “Speech Perception in Infants”; page unavailable) reports that 1- and 4-month-old infants discriminated synthetic speech sounds across a voiced–voiceless stop-consonant boundary. That supports early sensitivity to a phonetic difference, but the study tested one acoustic dimension, voice onset time, and does not establish that infants initially hear all phonetic differences. (LLM, conf=0.88)
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Lasky et al., 1975 source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Partly supported
The sources with a verdict support this claim; the rest weren’t checked yet, have no full text we could read, or their verdicts aren’t rated yet.
In the paper
“Furthermore, while previous studies show that infants integrate the auditory and visual instantiations of speech (Kuhl and Meltzoff, 1982; Patterson and Werker, 1999), more recent studies show that infants’ detection of statistical patterns in speech stimuli, like those used by Maye and her colleagues, is influenced both by the auditory event and the sight of a face articulating the sounds.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kuhl and Meltzoff, 1982 source
- Supportedcites Patterson and Werker, 1999 source
The Results and Discussion report that 4.5- to 5-month-old infants matched heard vowel sounds to the corresponding lip movements. The General Discussion describes this linking of seen and heard speech as achieving a unified percept. Page numbers were not supplied in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.92)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Every source the paper cites for this claim was checked and supports it.
In the paper
“Recent findings show that even sleeping newborns detect this kind of statistical structure in speech, as shown in studies using event-related brain potentials (Teinonen et al., 2009).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Teinonen et al., 2009 source
The Abstract Results report that sleeping neonates extracted statistical properties from a continuous stream of syllables, with syllable-specific event-related brain responses demonstrating detection of word boundaries. The Discussion describes ERP recordings from sleeping newborns in two experiments. (LLM, conf=0.95)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Supported
The cited sources support only part of this claim — read each source’s verdict below.
In the paper
“Gaze following is a significant predictor of receptive vocabulary (Baldwin, 1995; Brooks and Meltzoff, 2005; Mundy and Gomes, 1998), and may help infants link the foreign speech to the objects they see.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Baldwin, 1995
- Partly supportedcites Brooks and Meltzoff, 2005 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
The Results report that correct gaze following accompanied by simultaneous vocalization at 10–11 months significantly predicted words understood at 14 and 18 months. Gaze following measured by the looking score alone did not significantly predict those receptive-vocabulary scores, so the claim omits a necessary qualifier. (LLM, conf=0.89)
- Partly supportedcites Mundy and Gomes, 1998 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
In “Predictors of Receptive Language Development” (page not provided), the paper reports that responding to joint-attention bids significantly predicted later receptive language. The Measures section identifies the outcome as a receptive-language score, not a vocabulary-specific measure; the joint-attention task assessed following the tester’s pointing rather than gaze alone. (LLM, conf=0.85)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Every source the paper cites for this claim was checked and supports it.
In the paper
“Humans are not the only species in which communicative learning is affected by social interaction (see Fitch et al., 2010 for review).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neurobiological Foundations of Communicative Learning
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Fitch et al., 2010 source
In “Vocal Imitation Provides a Form of Cultural Transmission” (page unavailable), the review says song learning is fundamentally social: young birds in many species learn preferentially from a living tutor, while some species will not learn from recordings in isolation. This supports the claim that social interaction affects communicative learning in species other than humans. (LLM, conf=0.94)
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Supported
The sources with a verdict support this claim; the rest weren’t checked yet, have no full text we could read, or their verdicts aren’t rated yet.
In the paper
“Both studies show activation in brain areas responsible for speech production (the inferior frontal, Broca’s area) in response to auditorally presented speech.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Imada et al., 2006 source
- Supportedcites Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2006 source
The paper reports fMRI activation in Broca’s area while 3-month-old infants listened to sentences. Its Discussion also reports a MEG study finding an inferior frontal source coupled with a superior temporal source during auditory syllable discrimination in 6- and 12-month-olds, supporting the claim about both methods. (LLM, conf=0.88)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
The sources with a verdict support this claim; the rest weren’t checked yet, have no full text we could read, or their verdicts aren’t rated yet.
In the paper
“In barn owls (Brainard and Knudsen, 1998) and white-crowned sparrows (Baptista and Petrinovich, 1986), a richer social environment extends the duration of the sensitive period for learning.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neurobiological Foundations of Communicative Learning
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Brainard and Knudsen, 1998 source
For the barn-owl portion attributed to Brainard and Knudsen, the section ‘The influence of environmental conditions on sensitive periods’ reports that sensitive periods were extended in large group aviaries compared with small individual cages. The paper describes these aviaries as offering a richer social and sensory environment; it does not isolate social interaction from the other differences between the settings. (LLM, conf=0.90)
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Baptista and Petrinovich, 1986 source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Supported
Every source the paper cites for this claim was checked and supports it.
In the paper
“Moreover, gene expression in high-level auditory areas is involved in this kind of social context perception (Woolley & Doupe, 2008).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neurobiological Foundations of Communicative Learning
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Woolley & Doupe, 2008 source
The Discussion (page not provided) reports that social context differentially modulated the number of ZENK-expressing cells in two higher-order auditory areas of female zebra finches. This supports the claim that gene expression in those areas is involved in perceiving the song's social context, without establishing a causal role. (LLM, conf=0.91)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Supported
- It may state two separate claims as one. 47
- Probably not a substantial claim. 9
Every source the paper cites for this claim was checked and supports it.
In the paper
“In the last decade, brain and behavioral studies indicate a very complex set of interacting brain systems in the initial acquisition of language, many of which appear to reflect adult language processing, even early in infancy (Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2006).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Signatures of Early Learning
What the sources say
- Supportedcites Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2006 source
The paper’s opening summary reports an adult-like pattern of responses across a functionally distinct network in 3-month-old infants and describes a complex, hierarchical organization that may play a crucial role in language acquisition. The Discussion also relates this brain organization to behavioral evidence of infants’ speech-perception abilities. The claim is a broad paraphrase of those findings. (LLM, conf=0.91)
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Supported
The cited sources support only part of this claim — read each source’s verdict below.
In the paper
“Statistical learning has been shown in nonhuman animals (Hauser et al., 2001), and in humans for stimuli outside the realm of speech, operating for musical and visual patterns in the same way as speech (Fiser and Aslin, 2002; Kirkham et al., 2002; Saffran et al., 1999).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Hauser et al., 2001 source
- Partly supportedcites Fiser and Aslin, 2002 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
The Abstract and Results and Discussion report that 9-month-old infants learn statistical relationships in visual scenes, supporting the visual-pattern part of the citation. This paper does not establish that visual learning operates in the same way as speech learning; the sentence cites other works for the animal and musical-pattern claims. (LLM, conf=0.82)
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kirkham et al., 2002 source
boosted- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The sources with a verdict support this claim; the rest weren’t checked yet, have no full text we could read, or their verdicts aren’t rated yet.
In the paper
“Imada et al. reported synchronized activation in response to speech in auditory and motor areas at 6 and 12 months, and Dehaene et al. reported activation in motor speech areas in response to sentences in 3-month-olds.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Imada et al., 2006 source
- Supportedcites Dehaene et al., 2006 source
The claim attributes the finding about 3-month-olds to Dehaene et al.; the finding about 6- and 12-month-olds is attributed to Imada et al. The paper reports activation in Broca’s area when 3-month-old infants listened to short sentences (opening summary; Results, Fig. 1). It discusses Broca’s area in relation to speech production, supporting the paraphrase “motor speech areas.” (LLM, conf=0.93)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The cited sources support only part of this claim — read each source’s verdict below.
In the paper
“The induced brain rhythms have been linked to attention and cognitive effort, and are of primary interest since MEG studies with adults have shown that cognitive effort is increased when processing nonnative speech (Zhang et al., 2005; 2009).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Brain Rhythms, Cognitive Effects, and Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Zhang et al., 2005 source
- Partly supportedcites Zhang et al., 2009 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
The Discussion (Relationships between Brain Plasticity, Neural Sensitivity and Efficiency; page unavailable) reports greater overall MEG activation in Japanese than American adults processing the /r-l/ contrast, consistent with less efficient processing of that nonnative contrast. It does not establish increased cognitive effort directly or link induced brain rhythms to attention and effort; its attention-related discussion concerns regional activation. (LLM, conf=0.82)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The cited sources support only part of this claim — read each source’s verdict below.
In the paper
“Training studies show that adults can improve nonnative phonetic perception when training occurs under more social learning conditions, and MEG measures before and after training indicate that neural efficiency increases after training (Zhang et al., 2009).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Brain Rhythms, Cognitive Effects, and Language Learning
What the sources say
- Partly supportedcites Zhang et al., 2009 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
The Discussion reports improved English /r–l/ identification by Japanese adults, and the Abstract reports pre–post MEG changes consistent with increased neural efficiency. But the Materials and Methods describe computer-based training with infant-directed-speech features, not training under social learning conditions. Those features may make the training more socially informed, but the paper does not establish the claimed social condition. (LLM, conf=0.87)
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Partly supported
In the paper
“Japanese infants’ discrimination of English r-l declines between 8 and 10 months of age, while at the same time in development, American infants’ discrimination of the same sounds shows an increase (Kuhl et al., 2006) (Figure 3).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The Timing of Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kuhl et al., 2006 source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Work in this laboratory also established a new fact: At the same time that nonnative perception declines, native language speech perception shows a significant increase.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The Timing of Phonetic Learning
boostedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Infants who shifted their gaze between the tutor’s eyes and newly introduced toys during the Spanish exposure sessions showed a more negative MMN (indicating greater neural discrimination) in response to the Spanish phonetic contrast. Infants who simply gazed at the tutor or at the toy, showing fewer gaze shifts, produced less negative MMN responses.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“In support of this view, it is noteworthy that in the Spanish exposure studies, a median split of the post-exposure MMN phonetic discrimination data revealed that infants showing greater phonetic learning had higher cognitive control scores post-exposure. These same infants did not differ in their pre-exposure cognitive control tests (Conboy, Sommerville, and Kuhl, in preparation).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Language, Cognition, and Bilingual Language Experience
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Conboy, Sommerville, and Kuhl, in preparation
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
In the paper
“The results confirmed Spanish language learning, both of the phonetic units of the language and the lexical units of the language (Conboy and Kuhl, in press).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Conboy and Kuhl, in press
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“When presented with language from a Spanish speaker (but not from an English speaker), a new pattern of infant vocalizations was evoked, one that reflected the prosodic patterns of Spanish, rather than English. This only occurred in response to Spanish, and only occurred in infants who had been exposed to Spanish in the laboratory experiment.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Structural MRI measures in young infants identify the size of various brain structures and these measures have been shown to be related to language abilities later in childhood (Ortiz-Mantilla, Choe, Flax, Grant, and Benasich, 2010).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Windows to the Young Brain
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Ortiz-Mantilla, Choe, Flax, Grant, and Benasich, 2010 source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“In adulthood, language is highly modularized, which accounts for the very specific patterns of language deficits and brain damage in adult patients following stroke (Kuhl and Damasio, in press).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Signatures of Early Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Kuhl and Damasio, in press
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“We are also beginning to discover how exposure to two languages early in infancy produces a bilingual brain.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Introduction
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The assertion that social factors gate language learning explains not only how typically developing children acquire language, but also why children with autism exhibit twin deficits in social cognition and language, and why nonhuman animals with impressive computational abilities do not acquire language.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Signatures of Early Learning
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: unclear — It is unclear why the paper says it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The infant brain is exquisitely poised to “crack the speech code” in a way that the adult brain cannot.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Signatures of Early Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Similarly, Spanish learning infants must distinguish phonetic units critical to Spanish words (bano and pano), whereas English learning infants must combine them into a single category (English b).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Focal example: Phoneme Learning
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“But infants are exposed to many more phonetic variants than will be used phonemically, and have to derive the appropriate groupings used in their specific language.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Focal example: Phoneme Learning
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“We argued that the increase observed in native-language phonetic perception represented a critical step in initial language learning and promoted language growth (Kuhl et al., 2006).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Phonetic Learning Predicts the Rate of Language Growth
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kuhl et al., 2006 source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“The world’s languages contain approximately 600 consonants and 200 vowels (Ladefoged, 2001).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Focal example: Phoneme Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Ladefoged, 2001
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
A claim is checked only against the cited paper’s full text, never its abstract, and none is available for its sources.
In the paper
“The variability in speech input is simply too enormous; Japanese adults produce both English r- and l- like sounds, exposing Japanese infants to both sounds (Lotto et al., 2004; Werker et al., 2007).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Focal example: Phoneme Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Lotto et al., 2004
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Werker et al., 2007 source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Work in my laboratory led me to advance the concept of neural commitment, the idea that neural circuitry and overall architecture develops early in infancy to detect the phonetic and prosodic patterns of speech (Kuhl, 2004; Zhang et al., 2005, 2009).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Language Exhibits a “Critical Period” for Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kuhl, 2004 source
- Not matchedcites Zhang et al., 2005, 2009
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Japanese-learning infants have to group the phonetic units r and l into a single phonemic category (Japanese r), whereas English-learning infants must uphold the distinction to separate rake from lake.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Focal example: Phoneme Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Vocabulary development “explodes” at 18 months of age, but does not appear to be as restricted by age as other aspects of language learning—one can learn new vocabulary items at any age.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Language Exhibits a “Critical Period” for Learning
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“To illustrate, adult speakers of English and Japanese produce both English r- and l-like sounds, even though English speakers hear /r/ and /l/ as distinct and Japanese adults hear them as identical.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“However, distributional frequency analyses of English and Japanese show differential patterns of distributional frequency; in English, /r/ and /l/ occur very frequently; in Japanese, the most frequent sound of this type is Japanese /r/ which is related to but distinct from both the English variants.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“contrast when each auditory stimulus was paired with the appropriate face articulating either /da/ or /ta/; discrimination did not occur if only one face was used with all auditory stimuli (Teinonen et al., 2008).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Teinonen et al., 2008 source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Infants tested in Sweden and the United States at 6 months of age showed a unique response to vowel sounds that represent the distributional mean in productions of adults who speak the language (i.e., “prototypes”); this response was shown only for stimuli infants had been exposed to in natural language (native-vowel prototypes), not foreign-language vowel prototypes (Kuhl et al., 1992).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kuhl et al., 1992 source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Statistical learning is computational in nature, and reflects implicit rather than explicit learning. It relies on the ability to automatically pick up and learn from the statistical regularities that exist in the stream of sensory information we process, and strongly influences both phonetic learning and early word learning.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Saffran et al., 1996 source
boosteddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Taken as a whole, these studies indicate infants pick up the distributional frequency patterns in ambient speech, whether they experience them during short-term laboratory experiments, or over months in natural environments, and can learn from them.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“These data led to a theoretical argument that an implicit learning process commits the brain’s neural circuitry to the properties of native-language speech, and that neural commitment has bi-directional effects – it increases learning for patterns (such as words) that are compatible with the learned phonetic structure, while decreasing perception of nonnative patterns that do not match the learned”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Phonetic Learning Predicts the Rate of Language Growth
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“After familiarization, infants in the bimodal group discriminated the /da/ and /ta/ sounds, whereas those in the unimodal group did not.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > A Computational Solution to Phonetic Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Maye et al., 2002 source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Social interaction may activate brain mechanisms that invoke a sense of relationship between the self and other, as well as social understanding systems that link perception and action (Hari and Kujala, 2009).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Hari and Kujala, 2009 source
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“When 9-month-old infants follow a tutor’s line of regard in our foreign-language learning situation, the tutor’s specific meaningful social cues, such as eye gaze and pointing to an object of reference, might help infants segment word-like units from ongoing speech, thus facilitating phonetic learning of the sounds contained in those words.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
hedgedconditional- Asserted: fails — The authors may not put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The authors may not put it forward as true. It may state two separate claims as one.
A claim is checked only against the cited paper’s full text, never its abstract, and none is available for its sources.
In the paper
“Thus, the presence of a human being interacting with the infant during language exposure, while not required for simpler statistical-learning tasks (Maye et al., 2002; Saffran et al., 1996), is critical for learning in complex natural language-learning situations”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Effects of Social Interaction on Computational Learning
What the sources say
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Rests on an assumption: By 9 months, the initial universal pattern of infant perception has changed to a more language-specific one.
- Rests on an assumption: The Mandarin phonetic contrast used in the test does not occur in English.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Laboratory studies testing infant phonetic and word learning from exposure to a complex natural language suggest limits on statistical learning, and provide new information suggesting that social brain systems are integrally involved, and, in fact, may be necessary to explain natural language learning.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Effects of Social Interaction on Computational Learning
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Attention and arousal affect learning in a wide variety of domains (Posner, 2004), and could impact infant learning during exposure to a new language.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Posner, 2004
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
- Not matched
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Bilingual adult speakers show enhanced executive control skills (Bialystok, 1999, 2001; Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Wang et al., 2009), a finding that has been extended to young school-aged bilingual children (Carlson and Meltzoff, 2008).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Language, Cognition, and Bilingual Language Experience
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Bialystok, 1999, 2001
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not matchedcites Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Wang et al., 2009 source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“During live exposure, tutors focused their visual gaze on pictures in the books or on the toys as they spoke, and the infants’ gaze tended to follow the speaker’s gaze, as previously observed in social learning studies (Baldwin, 1995; Brooks and Meltzoff, 2002).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Baldwin, 1995
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Brooks and Meltzoff, 2002 source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The effects of Spanish language exposure extend to speech production, and provide evidence of an early coupling of sensory-motor learning in speech.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Gating could operate by increasing: (1) attention and/or arousal, (2) information, (3) a sense of relationship, and/or (4) activation of brain mechanisms linking perception and action.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Referential information is present in both the live and televised conditions, but it is more difficult to pick up via television, and is totally absent during audio-only presentations.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“White-crowned sparrows, which reject the audiotaped songs of alien species, learn the same alien songs when a live tutor sings them (Baptista and Petrinovich, 1986).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neurobiological Foundations of Communicative Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Baptista and Petrinovich, 1986 source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“As reviewed, new data show the extensive interface between cognition and language and indicate that whether or not multiple languages are experienced in infancy affects cognitive brain systems.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Underpinnings of Cognitive and Social Influences on Language Learning
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Newborns tested by Imada et al. (2006) showed no activation in motor speech areas for any signals, whereas auditory areas responded robustly to all signals, suggesting the possibility that perception-action linkages for speech develop by 3 months of age as infants begin to produce vowel-like sounds.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Imada et al., 2006 source
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim could be matched to a paper in Crossref, so there is nothing to check it against.
In the paper
“If social factors “gate” computational learning, as proposed, infants would be protected from meaningless calculations – learning would be restricted to signals that derive from live humans rather than other sources (Doupe and Kuhl, 2008; Evans and Marler, 1995; Marler, 1991).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Underpinnings of Cognitive and Social Influences on Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Doupe and Kuhl, 2008
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not matchedcites Evans and Marler, 1995
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not matchedcites Marler, 1991
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
A claim is checked only against the cited paper’s full text, never its abstract, and none is available for its sources.
In the paper
“Power in the theta band increases with memory load in adults tested in either verbal or nonverbal tasks (Gevins et al., 1997; Krause et al., 2000) and in 8-month-old infants tested in working memory tasks (Bell and Wolfe, 2007).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Brain Rhythms, Cognitive Effects, and Language Learning
What the sources say
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“More recent data indicate that male zebra finches vary their songs across social contexts; songs produced when singing to females vary from those produced in isolation, and females prefer these ‘directed’ songs (Wooley and Doupe, 2008).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neurobiological Foundations of Communicative Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Wooley and Doupe, 2008
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Social interaction appears to be necessary for language learning in infants (Kuhl et al., 2003), and an individual infant’s social behavior is linked to their ability to learn new language material (Conboy and Kuhl, in press).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Underpinnings of Cognitive and Social Influences on Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kuhl et al., 2003 source
- Not matchedcites Conboy and Kuhl, in press
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A claim is checked only against the cited paper’s full text, never its abstract, and none is available for its sources.
In the paper
“Language evolved to address a need for social communication and evolution may have forged a link between language and the social brain in humans (Adolphs, 2003; Dunbar, 1998; Kuhl, 2007; Pulvermuller, 2005).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Underpinnings of Cognitive and Social Influences on Language Learning
What the sources say
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Recent ERP studies indicate that infants’ brain responses to the exaggerated patterns of motherese elicit an enhanced N250 as well as increased neural synchronization at frontal-central-parietal sites (Zhang, Koerner, Miller, Grice-Patil, Svec, Tusler and Carney, in press).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Brain Rhythms, Cognitive Effects, and Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Zhang, Koerner, Miller, Grice-Patil, Svec, Tusler and Carney, in press
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Brain oscillations in various frequency bands have been associated with cognitive abilities.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Brain Rhythms, Cognitive Effects, and Language Learning
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The idea that social interaction is integral to language learning has been raised previously for word learning; however, previous data and theorizing have not tied early phonetic learning to social factors. Doing so suggests a more fundamental connection between the motivation to learn socially and the mechanisms that enable language learning.”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Neural Underpinnings of Cognitive and Social Influences on Language Learning
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“It is also noteworthy that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) prefer to listen to non-speech rather than speech, when given a choice, and this preference is strongly correlated with the children’s ERP brain responses to speech, as well as with the severity of their autistic symptoms (Kuhl et al., 2005b).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Brain Rhythms, Cognitive Effects, and Language Learning
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Kuhl et al., 2005b
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
boostedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
The paper relies on this without support.
Greater negativity of the mismatch negativity response reflects greater speech discrimination.
“As shown in Figure 4, the ERP measure at 7.5 months of age (Fig 4A) provided an MMN measure of speech discrimination for both native and nonnative contrasts; greater negativity of the MMN reflects greater discrimination (Fig 4B).”
The paper relies on this without support.
Spoken language lacks reliable markers for word boundaries in typical phrases.
“Unlike written language, spoken language has no reliable markers to indicate word boundaries in typical phrases.”
The paper relies on this without support.
By 9 months, the initial universal pattern of infant perception has changed to a more language-specific one.
“At 9 months of age, the age at which the initial universal pattern of infant perception has changed to one that is more language-specific, infants were exposed to a foreign language for the first time (Kuhl et al., 2003).”
The paper relies on this without support.
The Mandarin phonetic contrast used in the test does not occur in English.
“all were tested with a Mandarin phonetic contrast that does not occur in English.”
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“this window of development could correspond to early critical periods when brain development is particularly sensitive to experience and when brain plasticity, involving sensory systems but also motor functions and cognition, is possible (147).”
From Gene × Environment Interactions in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Role of Epigenetic Mechanisms (2014) · cites this paper as [147]
In the citing paper
“During early life, these key periods of high brain plasticity involve sensory systems, but also motor functions and cognition 10 .”
From Progress toward treatments for synaptic defects in autism (2013) · cites this paper as [10]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
“Imada et al. (2006) used magnetoenchephalography (MEG) to study newborns, 6-month-old infants, and 12-month-old infants while they listened to nonspeech, harmonics, and syllables (Figure 7).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
“Our results (Figure 7) show that they do (Conboy et al., submitted). Infants who shifted their gaze between the tutor’s eyes and newly introduced toys during the Spanish exposure sessions showed a more negative MMN (indicating greater neural discrimination) in response to the Spanish phonetic contrast.”
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Language Exhibits a “Critical Period” for Learning
“A stage-setting concept for human language learning is the graph shown in Figure 1, redrawn from a study by Johnson and Newport on English grammar in native speakers of Korean learning English as a second language (1989).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Language Exhibits a “Critical Period” for Learning
“Figure 2 is surprising from the standpoint of more general human learning.”
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > Explaining the Effect of Social Interaction on Language Learning
“Our results (Figure 7) show that they do (Conboy et al., submitted).”
§ Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition > The “Social Brain” and Language Learning Mechanisms
“Imada et al. (2006) used magnetoenchephalography (MEG) to study newborns, 6-month-old infants, and 12-month-old infants while they listened to nonspeech, harmonics, and syllables (Figure 7).”
Citations
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BackgroundSelf-citationAge constraints on second-language acquisition
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“…curve is representative of data across a wide variety of second-language learning studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999;…”
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“Mean percent correct scores are shown with standard errors indicated (adapted from Kuhl et al., 2006). discerned in the babbling of infants raised in different countries (de Boysson-Bardies, 1993), and in the laboratory, vocal imitation can be elicited by 20 weeks (Kuhl and Meltzoff, 1982).”
BackgroundResultInfluentialSelf-citationKuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., & Nelson, T. (2008) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2154 · Cited by 886 · cited 8×
“…at 7.5 months (C, left) and vocabulary growth for MMN values of +1 SD and 1 SD on the nonnative contrast at 7.5 months (C, right) (adapted from Kuhl et al., 2008). was measured in the same infants at 7.5 months of age, better native language perception predicted significantly higher language…”
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“Bilingual adult speakers show enhanced executive control skills (Bialystok, 1999, 2001; Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Wang et al., 2009), a finding that has been extended to young school-aged bilingual children (Carlson and Meltzoff, 2008).”
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“Gaze following is a significant predictor of receptive ocabulary (Baldwin, 1995; Brooks and Meltzoff, 2005; Mundy nd Gomes, 1998), and may help infants link the foreign speech (A) Nine-month-old infants experienced 12 sessions of Spanish through natural interaction with a Spanish speaker.”
BackgroundInfants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months
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“…at 7.5 months (C, left) and vocabulary growth for MMN values of +1 SD and 1 SD on the nonnative contrast at 7.5 months (C, right) (adapted from Kuhl et al., 2008). was measured in the same infants at 7.5 months of age, better native language perception predicted significantly higher language…”
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Self-citationFoundations for a new science of learning
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“Moreover, this gating hypothesis may explain why social factors play a far more significant role than previously realized in human learning across domains throughout our lifetimes (Meltzoff et al., 2009).”
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The Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention
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“…agreement that this learning curve is representative of data across a wide variety of second-language learning studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997;…”
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“An interest in ‘‘motherese,’’ the universal style with which adults address infants across cultures (Fernald and Simon, 1984; Grieser and Kuhl, 1988) provides a good metric of the value of a social interest in speech.”
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“…studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999; Yeni-Komshian et al., 2000; though see Birdsong, 1992; White and Genesee, 1996).”
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“…a linkage between sensory and motor experience; sensory experience with a specific language establishes auditory patterns stored in memory that are unique to that language, and these representations guide infants’ successive motor approximations until a match is achieved (Kuhl and Meltzoff, 1996).”
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“…variety of second-language learning studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999; Yeni-Komshian et al., 2000; though see…”
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PRIMIR: a developmental framework of infant speech processing
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“An extensive literature on developmental speech perception exists and brain measures are adding substantially to our knowledge of phonetic development and learning (see Kuhl, 2004; Kuhl et al., 2008; Werker and Curtin, 2005).”
BackgroundEarly speech perception and later language development: implications for the “critical period”
Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Padden, D., Nelson, T., & Pruitt, J. (2005) · Language Learning and Development · doi:10.1080/15475441.2005.9671948 · Cited by 482
Self-citationWhat's new, pussycat? On talking to babies and animals
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“motherese, observed across languages, makes phonetic units more distinct from one another (Burnham et al., 2002; Englund, 2005; Kuhl et al., 1997; Liu et al., 2003, 2007).”
BackgroundAn association between mothers' speech clarity and infants' speech discrimination skills
Liu, H., Kuhl, P. K., & Tsao, F. (2003) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/1467-7687.00275 · Cited by 466
Self-citationHow native is near-native? The issue of ultimate attainment in adult second language acquisition
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“learning studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999; Yeni-Komshian et al., 2000; though see Birdsong, 1992; White and Genesee, 1996).”
BackgroundSignal-Driven Computations in Speech Processing
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“Statistical learning has been shown in nonhuman animals (Hauser et al., 2001), and in humans for stimuli outside the realm of speech, operating for musical and visual patterns in the same way as speech (Fiser and Aslin, 2002; Kirkham et al., 2002; Saffran et al., 1999).”
BackgroundBrain potentials to native and non-native speech contrasts in 7- and 11-month-old American infants
Rivera‐Gaxiola, M., Silva‐Pereyra, J., & Kuhl, P. K. (2005) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00403.x · Cited by 413 · cited 1×
“…6 and 12 months of age (Werker and Tees, 1984), and initial work demonstrated that infants’ perception of nonnative distinctions declines during the second half of the first year of life (Best and McRoberts, 2003; Rivera-Gaxiola et al., 2005; Tsao et al., 2006;Werker and Tees, 1984).”
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“As reviewed, infants show robust learning effects in statistical learning studies when tested in the laboratory with very simple stimuli (Maye et al., 2002, 2008; Saffran et al., 1996).”
BackgroundFlege, J. E. (1991) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.400473 · Cited by 371 · cited 1×
“The speaking patterns we adopt early in life last a lifetime (Flege, 1991).”
BackgroundBiological foundations of language
Furth, H. G. (1968) · Journal of Communication Disorders · doi:10.1016/0021-9924(68)90040-3 · Cited by 359
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Hertz-Pannier, L., Dubois, J., Mériaux, S., Roche, A., Sigman, M., & Dehaene, S. (2006) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0606302103 · Cited by 358 · cited 2×
“In the last decade, brain and behavioral studies indicate a very complex set of interacting brain systems in the initial acquisition of language, many of which appear to reflect adult language processing, even early in infancy (Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2006).”
BackgroundThe Effect of Preceding Context on Inhibition: An Event-Related fMRI Study
Durston, S., Thomas, K. M., Worden, M. S., Yang, Y., & Casey, B. J. (2002) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1006/nimg.2002.1074 · Cited by 357
Mayberry, R. I., & Lock, E. (2003) · Brain and Language · doi:10.1016/s0093-934x(03)00137-8 · Cited by 352 · cited 1×
“…learning studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999; Yeni-Komshian et al., 2000; though see Birdsong, 1992; White and Genesee,…”
Background4. A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior
Chomsky, N. A. D. T. (2014) · Harvard University Press eBooks · doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674594623.c6 · Cited by 348
Female visual displays affect the development of male song in the cowbird
West, M. J., & King, A. P. (1988) · Nature · doi:10.1038/334244a0 · Cited by 347 · cited 1×
“…respond to the social gestures and displays of females, which affect the rate, quality, and retention of song elements in their repertoires (West and King, 1988), and white-crowned sparrow tutors provide acoustic feedback that affects the repertoires of young birds (Nelson and Marler,…”
BackgroundNeuroimaging Studies of Language Production and Comprehension
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Kaschak, M. P. (2002) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145128 · Cited by 325 · cited 1×
“714 Neuron 67, September 9, 2010 ª2010 Elsevier Inc. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a popular method of neuroimaging in adults because it provides high spatial-resolution maps of neural activity across the entire brain (e.g., Gernsbacher and Kaschak, 2003).”
MethodStatistical language learning in neonates revealed by event-related brain potentials
Teinonen, T., Fellman, V., Näätänen, R., Alku, P., & Huotilainen, M. (2009) · BMC Neuroscience · doi:10.1186/1471-2202-10-21 · Cited by 319
Archibald, J. (1994) · Language · doi:10.2307/416766 · Cited by 306 · cited 1×
“Learning to produce the sounds that will characterize infants as speakers of their ‘‘mother tongue’’ is equally challenging, and is not completely mastered until the age of 8 years (Ferguson et al., 1992).”
BackgroundSocial context-induced song variation affects female behavior and gene expression
Woolley, S. C., & Doupe, A. J. (2008) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060062 · Cited by 303 · cited 2×
“Moreover, gene expression in highlevel auditory areas is involved in this kind of social context perception (Woolley and Doupe, 2008).”
BackgroundEimas, P. D. (1975) · Perception & Psychophysics · doi:10.3758/bf03211210 · Cited by 295 · cited 1×
“An important discovery in the 1970s was that infants initially hear all these phonetic differences (Eimas, 1975; Eimas et al., 1971; Lasky et al., 1975; Werker and Lalonde, 1988).”
BackgroundVOT discrimination by four to six and a half month old infants from Spanish environments
Lasky, R. E., Syrdal-Lasky, A., & Klein, R. E. (1975) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(75)90099-5 · Cited by 289 · cited 1×
“An important discovery in the 1970s was that infants initially hear all these phonetic differences (Eimas, 1975; Eimas et al., 1971; Lasky et al., 1975; Werker and Lalonde, 1988).”
BackgroundVisual speech contributes to phonetic learning in 6-month-old infants
Teinonen, T., Aslin, R. N., Alku, P., & Csibra, G. (2008) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.05.009 · Cited by 287 · cited 1×
“…stimuli in the middle of a speech continuum, infants discriminated the /da-ta/ contrast when each auditory stimulus was paired with the appropriate face articulating either /da/ or /ta/; discrimination did not occur if only one face was used with all auditory stimuli (Teinonen et al., 2008).”
BackgroundPronunciation proficiency in the first and second languages of Korean–English bilinguals
Yeni–Komshian, G. H., Flege, J. E., & Liu, S. (2000) · Bilingualism Language and Cognition · doi:10.1017/s1366728900000225 · Cited by 278 · cited 2×
“learning studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999; Yeni-Komshian et al., 2000; though see Birdsong, 1992; White and Genesee, 1996).”
BackgroundNeural Substrates of Language Acquisition
Kuhl, P., & Rivera-Gaxiola, M. (2008) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.30.051606.094321 · Cited by 275 · cited 2×
“Cheour et al. (2004) and Imada et al. (2006) used new headtracking methods and MEG to show phonetic discrimination in Neuron 67, September 9, 2010 ª2010 Elsevier Inc. 713 (From Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiola, 2008). newborns and infants in the first year of life.”
BackgroundMethodSelf-citationSocial cognition and the evolution of language: constructing cognitive phylogenies
Fitch, W. T., Huber, L., & Bugnyar, T. (2010) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2010.03.011 · Cited by 264 · cited 1×
“Humansarenot theonly species inwhichcommunicative learning is affected by social interaction (see Fitch et al., 2010, for review).”
BackgroundNeville, H. J., Coffey, S. A., Lawson, D. S., Fischer, A. M., Emmorey, K. D., & Bellugi, U. (1997) · Brain and Language · doi:10.1006/brln.1997.1739 · Cited by 259 · cited 1×
“…studies (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Birdsong and Molis, 2001; Flege et al., 1999; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Kuhl et al., 2005a, 2008; Mayberry and Lock, 2003; Neville et al., 1997; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1999; Yeni-Komshian et al., 2000; though see Birdsong, 1992; White and Genesee, 1996).”
BackgroundIn other words: the science and psychology of second-language acquisition
(1995) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.32-4319 · Cited by 257
Stumpf, M. P. H. (2009) · Human Genomics · doi:10.1186/1479-7364-4-2-143 · Cited by 257
The effects of memory load on event-related EEG desynchronization and synchronization
Krause, C. M., Sillanmäki, L., Koivisto, M., Saarela, C., Häggqvist, A., Laine, M., & Hämäläinen, H. (2000) · Clinical Neurophysiology · doi:10.1016/s1388-2457(00)00429-6 · Cited by 246 · cited 1×
“Power in the theta band increases with memory load in adults tested in either verbal or nonverbal tasks (Gevins et al., 1997; Krause et al., 2000) and in 8-month-old infants tested in working memory tasks (Bell andWolfe, 2007).”
BackgroundInfant speech perception activates Broca's area: a developmental magnetoencephalography study
Imada, T., Zhang, Y., Cheour, M., Taulu, S., Ahonen, A., & Kuhl, P. K. (2006) · NeuroReport · doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000223387.51704.89 · Cited by 239
Self-citationLanguage comprehension and cerebral specialization from 13 to 20 months
Mills, D. L., Coffey‐Corina, S., & Neville, H. J. (1997) · Developmental Neuropsychology · doi:10.1080/87565649709540685 · Cited by 233 · cited 1×
“…diffuse and become more focally lateralized in the left hemisphere’s temporal regions as they develop (Conboy et al., 2008a; Durston et al., 2002; Mills et al., 1993, 1997; Tamm et al., 2002) and studies with young children with autism show this same pattern – more diffuse activation – when…”
BackgroundSong development in the white-crowned sparrow: social factors and sex differences
Baptista, L. F., & Petrinovich, L. (1986) · Animal Behaviour · doi:10.1016/s0003-3472(86)80207-x · Cited by 232 · cited 2×
“White-crowned sparrows, which reject the audiotaped songs of alien species, learn the same alien songs when a live tutor sings them (Baptista and Petrinovich, 1986).”
BackgroundBenasich, A. A., Gou, Z., Choudhury, N., & Harris, K. D. (2008) · Behavioural Brain Research · doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2008.08.049 · Cited by 230 · cited 1×
“Resting gamma has been related to early language and cognitive skills in the first three years (Benasich et al., 2008).”
BackgroundLanguage Acquisition and Cerebral Specialization in 20-Month-Old Infants
Mills, D. L., Coffey‐Corina, S., & Neville, H. J. (1993) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn.1993.5.3.317 · Cited by 222 · cited 1×
“…diffuse and become more focally lateralized in the left hemisphere’s temporal regions as they develop (Conboy et al., 2008a; Durston et al., 2002; Mills et al., 1993, 1997; Tamm et al., 2002) and studies with young children with autism show this same pattern – more diffuse activation – when…”
BackgroundInfant perception of non-native consonant contrasts that adults assimilate in different ways
Best, C. C., & McRoberts, G. W. (2003) · Language and Speech · doi:10.1177/00238309030460020701 · Cited by 214 · cited 2×
“Neuron 67, S universal perceptual ability to distinguish all the phonetic units of all languages to a more language specific pattern of perception occurred very early in development—between 6 and 12 months of age (Werker and Tees, 1984), and initial work demonstrated that infants’ perception of nonnative distinctions…”
BackgroundInfant-directed speech supports phonetic category learning in English and Japanese
Werker, J. F., Pons, F., Dietrich, C., Kajikawa, S., Fais, L., & Amano, S. (2007) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.03.006 · Cited by 206 · cited 1×
“The variability in speech input is simply too enormous; Japanese adults produce both English r- and l- like sounds, exposing Japanese infants to both sounds (Lotto et al., 2004; Werker et al., 2007).”
BackgroundThe right hemisphere of sleeping infant perceives sentential prosody
Homae, F., Watanabe, H., Nakano, T., Asakawa, K., & Taga, G. (2006) · Neuroscience Research · doi:10.1016/j.neures.2005.12.006 · Cited by 197 · cited 1×
“Reports have begun to appear on infants in the first two years of life, testing infant responses to phonemes as well as longer stretches of speech such as ‘‘motherese’’ and forward versus reversed sentences (Bortfeld et al., 2007; Homae et al., 2006; Peña et al., 2002; Taga and Asakawa, 2007).”
BackgroundLanguage Experience in Second Language Speech Learning: In Honor of James Emil Flege
Bohn, O., & Munro, M. J. (2009) · Phonetica · doi:10.1159/000192797 · Cited by 197
Selection-based learning in bird song development.
Nelson, D. A., & Marler, P. (1994) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.91.22.10498 · Cited by 189 · cited 1×
“…respond to the social gestures and displays of females, which affect the rate, quality, and retention of song elements in their repertoires (West and King, 1988), and white-crowned sparrow tutors provide acoustic feedback that affects the repertoires of young birds (Nelson and Marler, 1994).”
BackgroundCritical Thinking about Critical Periods: Perspectives on a Critical Period for Language Acquisition
Newport, E. L., Bavelier, D., & Neville, H. J. (2002) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/4108.003.0038 · Cited by 187
Investigating the role of attention in phonetic learning
Guion, S. G., & Pederson, E. (2007) · Language Learning & Language Teaching · doi:10.1075/lllt.17.09gui · Cited by 180 · cited 1×
“Recent data suggest role for attention in adult second-language phonetic learning as ell (Guion and Pederson, 2007).”
BackgroundEffects of language experience: neural commitment to language-specific auditory patterns
Zhang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Imada, T., Kotani, M., & Tohkura, Y. (2005) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.02.040 · Cited by 179 · cited 3×
“Work in my laboratory ledme to advance the concept of neural commitment, the idea that neural circuitry and overall architecture develops early in infancy to detect the phonetic and prosodic patterns of speech (Kuhl, 2004; Zhang et al., 2005, 2009).”
BackgroundSelf-citationMatching phonetic information in lips and voice is robust in 4.5-month-old infants
Patterson, M. L., & Werker, J. F. (1999) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/s0163-6383(99)00003-x · Cited by 177
Sensitive periods for visual calibration of the auditory space map in the barn owl optic tectum
Brainard, M. S., & Knudsen, E. I. (1998) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.18-10-03929.1998 · Cited by 176 · cited 1×
“In barn owls (Brainard and Knudsen, 1998) and white-crowned sparrows (Baptista and Petrinovich, 1986), a richer social environment extends the duration of the sensitive period for learning.”
BackgroundTsao, F.-M., Liu, H.-M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2006) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.2338290 · Cited by 174 · cited 1×
“…6 and 12 months of age (Werker and Tees, 1984), and initial work demonstrated that infants’ perception of nonnative distinctions declines during the second half of the first year of life (Best and McRoberts, 2003; Rivera-Gaxiola et al., 2005; Tsao et al., 2006;Werker and Tees, 1984).”
BackgroundSelf-citationAssessing infants' cortical response to speech using near-infrared spectroscopy
Bortfeld, H., Wruck, E., & Boas, D. A. (2007) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.08.010 · Cited by 169 · cited 2×
“Reports have begun to appear on infants in the first two years of life, testing infant responses to phonemes as well as longer stretches of speech such as ‘‘motherese’’ and forward versus reversed sentences (Bortfeld et al., 2007; Homae et al., 2006; Peña et al., 2002; Taga and Asakawa, 2007).”
BackgroundThe Infant's Auditory World: Hearing, Speech, and the Beginnings of Language
Saffran, J. R., Werker, J. F., & Werner, L. A. (2007) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0202 · Cited by 163 · cited 1×
“…deal of data about infants, their innate predispositions, and their incredible abilities to learn once exposed to natural language (Kuhl, 2009; Saffran et al., 2006), we are still just breaking ground with regard to the neural mechanisms that underlie language development (see Friederici and…”
BackgroundInvestigating the role of infant-directed speech with a computer model
de Boer, B., & Kuhl, P. K. (2003) · Acoustics Research Letters Online · doi:10.1121/1.1613311 · Cited by 154 · cited 1×
“…derive the phonemic inventory of a language from natural language input (Rabiner and Huang, 1993), though models improve when exposed to ‘‘motherese,’’ the linguistically simplified and acoustically exaggerated speech that adults universally use when speaking to infants (de Boer and Kuhl, 2003).”
BackgroundSelf-citationNeurophysiological markers of early language acquisition: from syllables to sentences
Friederici, A. D. (2005) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.08.008 · Cited by 152 · cited 1×
“Event-related Potentials (ERPs) have been widely used to study speech and language processing in infants and young children (for reviews, see Conboy et al., 2008a; Friederici, 2005; Kuhl, 2004).”
BackgroundAslin, R. N., & Mehler, J. (2005) · Journal of Biomedical Optics · doi:10.1117/1.1854672 · Cited by 148 · cited 1×
“Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) also measures cerebral hemodynamic responses in relation to neural activity, but utilizes the absorption of light, which is sensitive to the concentration of hemoglobin, to measure activation (Aslin and Mehler, 2005).”
BackgroundThe Cognitive Neurosciences IV
Gazzaniga, M. S., Dehaene, S., & Changeux, J. (2014) · Cited by 148
Distributional phonetic learning at 10 months of age
Yoshida, K. A., Pons, F., Maye, J., & Werker, J. F. (2010) · Infancy · doi:10.1111/j.1532-7078.2009.00024.x · Cited by 148
Zeigler, H. P., & Marler, P. (2012) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 137
Bell, M. A., & Wolfe, C. D. (2007) · Developmental Neuropsychology · doi:10.1207/s15326942dn3101_2 · Cited by 136
The influences of visual and vocal interaction on song learning in Zebra finches
Eales, L. A. (1989) · Animal Behaviour · doi:10.1016/0003-3472(89)90097-3 · Cited by 134 · cited 1×
“Young zebra finches need visual interaction with a tutor bird to learn song in the laboratory (Eales, 1989).”
BackgroundSustained and transient language control in the bilingual brain
Wang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Chen, C., & Dong, Q. (2009) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.12.055 · Cited by 133 · cited 1×
“Bilingual adult speakers show enhanced executive control skills (Bialystok, 1999, 2001; Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Wang et al., 2009), a finding that has been extended to young school-aged bilingual children (Carlson and Meltzoff, 2008).”
BackgroundSelf-citationNeural signatures of phonetic learning in adulthood: a magnetoencephalography study
Zhang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Imada, T., Iverson, P., Pruitt, J., Stevens, E. B., Kawakatsu, M., Tohkura, Y., & Nemoto, I. (2009) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.01.028 · Cited by 132 · cited 3×
“Work in my laboratory ledme to advance the concept of neural commitment, the idea that neural circuitry and overall architecture develops early in infancy to detect the phonetic and prosodic patterns of speech (Kuhl, 2004; Zhang et al., 2005, 2009).”
BackgroundSelf-citationShedding light on brain function: the event-related optical signal
Gratton, G., & Fabiani, M. (2001) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01701-0 · Cited by 132
Ultimate Attainment in Second Language Acquisition
Birdsong, D. (1992) · Language · doi:10.2307/416851 · Cited by 131
Anatomical Correlates of Foreign Speech Sound Production
Golestani, N., & Pallier, C. (2006) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl003 · Cited by 130 · cited 1×
“Structural MRIs show anatomical differences in brain regions across the lifespan, and have recently been used to predict second-language phonetic learning in adults (Golestani and Pallier, 2007).”
BackgroundLanguage processing in bilingual children
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LIU, H.-M., TSAO, F.-M., & KUHL, P. K. (2009) · Journal of Child Language · doi:10.1017/s030500090800929x · Cited by 128 · cited 1×
“New data show that the potential benefits of early motherese extend to the age of 5 years (Liu et al., 2009).”
BackgroundSelf-citationConboy, B. T., & Kuhl, P. K. (2010) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00973.x · Cited by 109 · cited 3×
“In studies testing this hypothesis, 9-month-old infants were exposed to Spanish (Conboy and Kuhl, 2010), extending the experiment to a new language.”
BackgroundResultSelf-citationNewport, E. L., Bavelier, D., & Neville, H. J. (2001) · Cited by 105
Acoustic analysis of lexical tone in Mandarin infant-directed speech.
Liu, H.-M., Tsao, F., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.4.912 · Cited by 99 · cited 1×
“The acoustic stretching in motherese, observed across languages, makes phonetic units more distinct from one another (Burnham et al., 2002; Englund, 2005; Kuhl et al., 1997; Liu et al., 2003, 2007).”
BackgroundSelf-citationCross-modal speech perception in adults and infants using nonspeech auditory stimuli
Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1991) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance · doi:10.1037/0096-1523.17.3.829 · Cited by 96 · cited 1×
“Constraints of this kind appear to exist for infant imitation: when infants hear nonspeech sounds with the same frequency components as speech, they do not attempt to imitate them (Kuhl et al., 1991).”
BackgroundSelf-citationTomasello, M. (2003) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/4117.003.0008 · Cited by 88 · cited 1×
“Theories of social learning have traditionally emphasized the role of social factors in language acquisition (Bruner, 1983; Vygotsky, 1962; Tomasello, 2003a, 2003b).”
BackgroundLanguage and Animal Communication: Parallels and Contrasts
(1995) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/1975.003.0022 · Cited by 88 · cited 16×
“No machine in the world can derive the phonemic inventory of a language from natural language input (Rabiner and Huang, 1993), though models improve when exposed to ‘‘motherese,’’ the linguistically simplified and acoustically exaggerated speech that adults universally use when speaking to infants (de Boer and Kuhl, 2…”
BackgroundInfluentialMarler, P. (2008) · doi:10.1002/9780470753507.ch17 · Cited by 85 · cited 2×
“Social contextsalsoadvancesongproduction in birds; male cowbirds respond to the social gestures and displays of females, which affect the rate, quality, and retention of song elements in their repertoires (West and King, 1988), and white-crowned sparrow tutors provide acoustic feedback that affects the repertoires of…”
BackgroundVoice onset time in infant directed speech over the first six months
Englund, K. T. (2005) · First Language · doi:10.1177/0142723705050286 · Cited by 74 · cited 1×
“The acoustic stretching in motherese, observed across languages, makes phonetic units more distinct from one another (Burnham et al., 2002; Englund, 2005; Kuhl et al., 1997; Liu et al., 2003, 2007).”
BackgroundCognitive control factors in speech perception at 11 months.
Conboy, B. T., Sommerville, J. A., & Kuhl, P. K. (2008) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0012975 · Cited by 73 · cited 7×
“…4C) is associated with enhanced inhibitory control, suggesting that domain-general cognitive mechanisms underlying attention may play a role in enhancing performance on native and suppressing performance on nonnative phonetic contrasts early in development (Conboy et al., 2008b; Kuhl et al., 2008).”
BackgroundResultInfluentialSelf-citationTaga, G., & Asakawa, K. (2007) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.04.037 · Cited by 69 · cited 1×
“Reports have begun to appear on infants in the first two years of life, testing infant responses to phonemes as well as longer stretches of speech such as ‘‘motherese’’ and forward versus reversed sentences (Bortfeld et al., 2007; Homae et al., 2006; Peña et al., 2002; Taga and Asakawa, 2007).”
Background(2004) · Cited by 66
Ontogeny of Language-Specific Syllabic Productions
Boysson-Bardies, B. (1993) · Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life · doi:10.1007/978-94-015-8234-6_29 · Cited by 57 · cited 1×
“Mean percent correct scores are shown with standard errors indicated (adapted from Kuhl et al., 2006). discerned in the babbling of infants raised in different countries (de Boysson-Bardies, 1993), and in the laboratory, vocal imitation can be elicited by 20 weeks (Kuhl and Meltzoff, 1982).”
BackgroundThe Mirror Neuron System and Imitation
Iacoboni, M. (2011) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195342161.013.0036 · Cited by 57
Ortiz-Mantilla, S., Choe, M.-S., Flax, J., Grant, P. E., & Benasich, A. A. (2010) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.10.029 · Cited by 53 · cited 1×
“Structural MRI measures in young infants identify the size of various brain structures and these measures have been shown to be related to language abilities later in childhood (Ortiz-Mantilla et al., 2010).”
BackgroundMagnetoencephalography is feasible for infant assessment of auditory discrimination
Cheour, M., Imada, T., Taulu, S., Ahonen, A., Salonen, J., & Kuhl, P. (2004) · Experimental Neurology · doi:10.1016/j.expneurol.2004.06.030 · Cited by 53 · cited 1×
“Cheour et al. (2004) and Imada et al. (2006) used new headtracking methods and MEG to show phonetic discrimination in Neuron 67, September 9, 2010 ª2010 Elsevier Inc. 713 (From Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiola, 2008). newborns and infants in the first year of life.”
MethodSelf-citationFriederici, A. D., & Wartenburger, I. (2010) · Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science · doi:10.1002/wcs.9 · Cited by 50
Weber-Fox, C. M., & Neville, H. J. (1999) · Cited by 49
Brain, behavior, and learning in language and reading disorders
Schultz, C. G., Mugge, J. R., & Ferraro, F. R. (2009) · The Psychological Record · doi:10.1007/bf03395677 · Cited by 36
Conboy, B. T., Rivera‐Gaxiola, M., Silva‐Pereyra, J., & Kuhl, P. K. (2008) · Trends in language acquisition research · doi:10.1075/tilar.5.04con · Cited by 32
Self-citationPerspectives on imitation: From neuroscience to social science. Mechanisms of imitation in animals
Hurley, S. L., & Chater, N. (2005) · UCL Discovery (University College London) · Cited by 21
Brain, behavior, and learning in language and reading disorders
Mody, M., & Silliman, E. R. (2008) · Cited by 19
The infant's auditory world : Hearing, speech and the beginnings of language
Saffran, J. R. (2006) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 18
ERPs to words correlate with behavioral measures in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Coffey‐Corina, S., Padden, D. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2008) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.2935280 · Cited by 14
Self-citationReview. Second language acquisition and the critical period hypothesis. D Birdsong (ed)
Abrahamsson, N. (1999) · Applied Linguistics · doi:10.1093/applin/20.4.571 · Cited by 12
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Dunbar, R. I. M. (1998) · Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews · doi:10.1002/(sici)1520-6505(1998)6:5 · cited 1×
“Language evolved to address a need for social communication and evolution may have forged a link between language and the social brain in humans (Adolphs, 2003; Dunbar, 1998; Kuhl, 2007; Pulvermuller, 2005).”
Early Language Acquisition: Neural Substrates and Theoretical Models
Kuhl, P. K. (2009) · The Cognitive Neurosciences · doi:10.7551/mitpress/8029.003.0073
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Sorted by citations
Adolescence as a sensitive period of brain development
Fuhrmann, D., Knoll, L. J., & Blakemore, S.-J. (2015) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.008 · Cited by 1,158
“Language development, too, generally shows heightened plasticity in childhood [11,12], although there is no single sensitive period for language.”
Musical Training as a Framework for Brain Plasticity: Behavior, Function, and Structure
Herholz, S. C., & Zatorre, R. J. (2012) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2012.10.011 · Cited by 976
“Through exposure during the first few months and years of life, a quick narrowing to the relevant cultural sounds takes place, both for music (e.g., scale properties) and speech sounds (e.g., phonemes and prosody) (Kuhl, 2010).”
BackgroundSocial influences on neuroplasticity: stress and interventions to promote well-being
Davidson, R. J., & McEwen, B. S. (2012) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn.3093 · Cited by 892
Critical periods in speech perception: New directions
Werker, J. F., & Hensch, T. K. (2015) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015104 · Cited by 774
“A similar relation has been reported between infant speech perception and later reading success (see Kuhl 2010).”
BackgroundInfluentialLow-Frequency Cortical Entrainment to Speech Reflects Phoneme-Level Processing
Liberto, G. M. D., O’Sullivan, J., & Lalor, E. C. (2015) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.030 · Cited by 586
“While we have speculated that our findings may have specific contributions from STS, the concordance with ECoG fromSTG suggests that the analysis frameworkwe have outlined may represent an important mechanism for applying findings from the ECoG community into research with a wider variety of subjects including infants…”
Metadata
- Authors
- Kuhl, P. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kuhl, Patricia K.
- Venue
- Neuron
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2010-09
- Volume
- 67
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 713-727
- ISSN
- 0896-6273 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2947444
- OpenAlex
- W2155721440
- Cited by
- 798
- References
- 172
- Citations by year
- 2026: 50 · 2025: 70 · 2024: 57 · 2023: 59 · 2022: 71 · 2021: 57 · 2020: 60 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 45 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 50 · 2015: 46 · 2014: 36 · 2013: 37 · 2012: 27
- FWCI
- 26.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Neuron (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Infant Health and Development
- Keywords
- early language acquisition, phonetic processing, language development, social learning
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Cognition, Computer Simulation, Critical Period, Psychological, Evoked Potentials
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).
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