Detecting foreign rhythm in native-language speech at birth

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Abstract

Humans tune in to the native language prosody before they are even born. Prior findings with newborns reported language-specific processing of forward versus backward speech and intonational contours and also indicated language-specific processing of iambic versus trochaic patterns in non-linguistic tone stimuli. The present experiment tested newborns’ processing of temporal rhythm patterns in naturalistic native-language speech. Czech-learning newborns were played naturally recorded well-formed Czech utterances with native Czech rhythm (virtually lacking cues to word-level stress) and with non-native rhythm (prolonged foot-initial syllables), while their hemodynamic activity was recorded. The results showed larger hemodynamic responses to the non-native than to the native rhythm in a late analysis window, attributable to a double-peak response shape in the non-native condition. This finding is discussed in terms of suprisal-induced resonating activity after hearing familiar native speech paired with an unfamiliar rhythm pattern. Further, there was an overall attenuated response to the native rhythm localized in the right frontal region (comprising the Broca's area), evidencing right-lateralized processing of speech rhythm. Traditional language development theories claimed that only coarse between-class rhythm differences between languages are processed at birth. Having demonstrated that newborns differentially process non-native vs. native rhythmic patterns within natural native-langugae speech, even in a language outside of the traditional rhythm classes, the present findings disprove some of the early theories and substantially deepen our understanding of early speech development.

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