期刊
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
卷 110, 期 38, 页码 15231-15235出版社
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1221166110
关键词
infancy; developmental tuning; language acquisition; conceptual development; language and thought
资金
- National Science Foundation (NSF) [0950376]
- NSF [0114948]
- European Research Council [269502]
- European Research Council (ERC) [269502] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [0950376] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Language is a signature of our species and our primary conduit for conveying the contents of our minds. The power of language derives not only from the exquisite detail of the signal itself but also from its intricate link to human cognition. To acquire a language, infants must identify which signals are part of their language and discover how these signals are linked to meaning. At birth, infants prefer listening to vocalizations of human and nonhuman primates; within 3 mo, this initially broad listening preference is tuned specifically to human vocalizations. Moreover, even at this early developmental point, human vocalizations evoke more than listening preferences alone: they engender in infants a heightened focus on the objects in their visual environment and promote the formation of object categories, a fundamental cognitive capacity. Here, we illuminate the developmental origin of this early link between human vocalizations and cognition. We document that this link emerges from a broad biological template that initially encompasses vocalizations of human and nonhuman primates (but not backward speech) and that within 6 mo this link to cognition is tuned specifically to human vocalizations. At 3 and 4 mo, nonhuman primate vocalizations promote object categorization, mirroring precisely the advantages conferred by human vocalizations, but by 6 mo, nonhuman primate vocalizations no longer exert this advantageous effect. This striking developmental shift illuminates a path of specialization that supports infants as they forge the foundational links between human language and the core cognitive processes that will serve as the foundations of meaning.
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