The speech signal is a continuous stream, where, contrary to written language, words are not separated. Yet, despite such a complex signal, by 6 months, infants can already recognize some words and by the end of their first year they can recognize a sizable amount (30 words on average). One mechanism that has been proposed they can rely upon is the so-called Statistical Learning (SL). In short, infants track regularities present in the speech signal and take advantage of such regularities to segment it (divide fluent speech stream into units that correspond to the words of the language). For instance, young infants can track frequency of occurrence of transitions between syllables (transitional probabilities): the probability of two syllables following each other is higher within a word than between words. There is a plethora of studies showing that infants are indeed sensitive to different types of distributional information at an early age.
The present project aims to investigate the linguistic SL abilities during the first two years of life and how they relate to later language development in different infant populations (monolingual infants, bilingual infants, and pre-term infants). Therefore, this project investigates the specificities underlying the acquisition of multiple phonological systems in the case of infants growing up in a specific bilingual environment (in which the phonological systems overlap, Catalan/Spanish). In addition, this project examines SL abilities in preterm infants (if birth occurs before 37 gestational weeks). Evidence has shown worse cognitive and behavioral outcomes in preterm children and adolescents and a higher risk for developmental delay compared to their full-term peers. These infants might not use statistical information as effectively as their peers and are therefore a crucial population to investigate whether SL abilities might be predictive of later language outcomes.
The research goals (RO) of this project are the following:
Objective 1. To compare the role of linguistic statistical learning abilities in early language development
and their potential as a predictor for later language development in different infant populations (monolingual, bilingual, and preterm)
Objective 2. To identify early neural and cognitive risk markers for developmental disorders and explore how/whether these correlate to statistical learning abilities and other linguistic abilities.
Objective 3. To develop appropriate experimental designs and data analysis tools that will be used through pupillometry measures and that can be used cross-linguistically and with young infants
