Frontiers of Auditory Cognition: Language Experience Alters the Brain's Processing of Speech

At the forefront of research on language acquisition are new data demonstrating infants' strategies in the early stages of language development. The data show that infants perceptually map critical aspects of ambient language in the first year of life before they can speak. Studies show that infants are sensitive to the statistical and abstract properties of speech that code information about their native language. Moreover, linguistic experience alters infants' perception of speech in a way that enhances native-language speech processing. Infants' abilities to learn simply by listening to language were not predicted by historical views. The findings demonstrate the importance of early exposure to language. At the same time, research in three additional disciplines is contributing to our understanding of language and its acquisition by children. Cultural anthropologists are demonstrating the universality of adult speech behavior when addressing infants and children across cultures, and this is creating a new view of the role adult speakers play in bringing language about in the child. Neuroscientists, using the techniques of modern brain imaging, are revealing the temporal and structural aspects of language processing by the brain that suggest a new view of the ``critical period'' for language acquisition. Computer scientists that model the computational aspects of childrens' language acquisition are meeting success using biologically inspired neural networks. The cross-disciplinary interaction now seen among scientists pursuing one of humans' greatest achievements, language, is quite promising.