experience-is-instrumental-tuning-link-between-language-cognition

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6-  to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

At birth, infants not only prefer listening to human vocalizations, but also have begun to link these vocalizations to cognition: For infants as young as ...

Northwestern University

Despite significant social difficulties, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are vulnerable to the effects of social exclusion. We recorded EEG while children with ASD and typical peers played a computerized game involving peer rejection. Children with ASD reported ostracism-related distress comparable to typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated a distinct pattern of temporal processing of rejection events in children with ASD. While typically developing children showed enhanced response to rejection at a late slow wave indexing emotional arousal and regulation, those with autism showed attenuation at an early component, suggesting reduced engagement of attentional resources in the aversive social context. Results emphasize the importance of studying the time course of social information processing in ASD; they suggest distinct mechanisms subserving similar overt behavior and yield insights relevant to development and implementation of targeted treatment approaches and objective measures of response to treatment.

Temporal dynamics reveal atypical brain response to social exclusion in autism.

Problems with reward system function have been posited as a primary difficulty in autism spectrum disorders. The current study examined an electrophysiological marker of feedback monitoring, the feedback-related negativity (FRN), during a monetary reward task. The study advanced prior understanding by focusing exclusively on a developmental sample, applying rigorous diagnostic characterization and introducing an experimental paradigm providing more subtly different feedback valence (reward versus non-reward instead of reward versus loss).

Preserved reward outcome processing in ASD as revealed by event-related potentials.

Recent evidence from very young human infants' responses to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations offers new insights - and brings new questions - to the forefront for those who seek to integrate primate-general and human-specific mechanisms of acoustic communication with theories of language acquisition.

Very young infants' responses to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations.

Well before they understand their first words, infants have begun to link language and cognition. This link is initially broad: At 3months, listening to both human and nonhuman primate vocalizations supports infants' object categorization, a building block of cognition. But by 6months, the link has narrowed: Only human vocalizations support categorization. What mechanisms underlie this rapid tuning process? Here, we document the crucial role of infants' experience as infants tune this link to cognition. Merely exposing infants to nonhuman primate vocalizations permits them to preserve, rather than sever, the link between these signals and categorization. Exposing infants to backward speech-a signal that fails to support categorization in the first year of life-does not have this advantage. This new evidence illuminates the central role of early experience as infants specify which signals, from an initially broad set, they will continue to link to core cognitive capacities.

Listening to the calls of the wild: The role of experience in linking language and cognition in young infants.

The power of human language rests upon its intricate links to human cognition. By 3 months of age, listening to language supports infants' ability to form object categories, a building block of cognition. Moreover, infants display a systematic shift between 3 and 4 months - a shift from familiarity to novelty preferences - in their expression of this link between language and core cognitive processes. Here, we capitalize on this tightly-timed developmental shift in fullterm infants to assess (a) whether it also appears in preterm infants and (b) whether it reflects infants' maturational status or the duration of their postnatal experience. Healthy late preterm infants (N = 22) participated in an object categorization task while listening to language. Their performance, coupled with that of fullterm infants, reveals that this developmental shift is evident in preterm infants and unfolds on the same maturational timetable as in their fullterm counterparts.

Article	Year
Temporal dynamics reveal atypical brain response to social exclusion in autism. Developmental cognitive neuroscience\| PubMed ID: 21731598	2011
Preserved reward outcome processing in ASD as revealed by event-related potentials. Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders\| PubMed ID: 22958616	2012
Very young infants' responses to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations. The Behavioral and brain sciences\| PubMed ID: 25514943	2014
Listening to the calls of the wild: The role of experience in linking language and cognition in young infants. Cognition\| PubMed ID: 27209387	2016
Maturation constrains the effect of exposure in linking language and thought: evidence from healthy preterm infants. Developmental science\| PubMed ID: 28032433	2016

Danielle R. Perszyk

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