Effects of short-term exposure to a foreign language on discrimination of a non-native phonetic contrast: Convergent evidence from brain and behavioral tests
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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Effects of short-term exposure to a foreign language on discrimination of a non-native phonetic contrast: Convergent evidence from brain and behavioral tests
Description:
Studies in our laboratory demonstrate that between 6 and 12 months of age infants show a significant increase in the ability to discriminate native-language phonetic contrasts and a decline in foreign-language discrimination. The increase in performance on native-language contrasts suggests a process of active learning rather than maintenance. In the present experiment, we tested whether the learning process infants engage in during the period between 6 and 12 months extends to a foreign language the infants had not previously heard. American infants at 9 months of age participated in a 12-session language play group in which they heard a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese read, play, and talk to them. A control group was exposed to American English using the same books and toys. Both groups were subsequently tested on a Mandarin Chinese contrast using both behavioral and brain measures. The results demonstrate that infants exposed to Mandarin over a 4-week period show significant discrimination of the Mandarin contrast measured both behaviorally and with event-related potentials (ERP). The data, demonstrating that short-term exposure to language results in significant increases in performance, suggest a powerful learning process in language acquisition. [Research supported by NIH, HFSP, and the Talaris Research Institute.]