Development of language-specific phoneme representations in the infant brain

Here it is demonstrated the development of language-specific 'memory traces' in the brains of the same group of infants between six months and one year of age.

Abstract

Studies using behavioral methods, such as head-turning experiments, in which children are conditioned to turn their heads toward the sound source when they detect a change in the sound, have shown that environment has an important effect on how infants perceive language1,2,3,4. Young infants are able to discriminate almost all phonetic contrasts, whereas older infants discriminate better between phonemes that occur in the language that they normally hear, rather than foreign-language phonemes. Here we demonstrate the development of language-specific 'memory traces' in the brains of the same group of infants between six months and one year of age.