NeuroPerKog:development of phonematic hearing

& working memory in infants & children

NeuroPerKog:development of phonematic hearing

& working memory in infants & children

Włodzisław Duch & many good brains from:

1. Nicolaus Copernicus University, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Toruń

2. World Hearing Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Kajetany, Warsaw

3. Medical University of Warsaw; Clinic of the Developmental Age Psychiatry

4. Adam Mickiewicz University, Institute of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures; Poznań

+ collaborators from the Chair of Cognitive Psychology, Warsaw University, Institute of Mother and Child, Warsaw, Polish Academy of Science. 5 years/30 people, not including collaborators from foreign institutions.

General motivationI was trying to realize such project since 1997 (Active stimulation of speech, Polish patent no. 184102, granted in 2002, dropped in 2007).

Started Polish Cognitive Science Society, first CS journal in Poland (1998), teaching CS courses, created neurocognitive lab starting in Oct. 2013.

In 2013/14 we shall have MSc projects and then PhD students in CS.

General goal: understand whether interactive systems providing direct rewards may help to develop better perception, working memory, how this will influence cognitive development of infants and children in a semi-supervised way, first time in the history! Creating conditions that will encourage optimal development of infants and babies.

Main research goals

Study the regularities of language acquisition

• Create novel interactive cribs and toys, stimulating/rewarding infants to avoid perceptual errors.

• Determine the role of early training in phoneme discrimination

- longitudinal study: 18, 22, 25, 27, 30 months

• Understand how the early training will influence language competence and working memory in the later period

- longitudinal study: 18, 22, 25, 27, 30 months

• Test the influence of immediate rewards on comprehension of speech in children after cochlear implantation.

- longitudinal case study

Studies

Novel hardware Informatics

Three Pillars

Studies

Novel hardware Informatics

Three Pillars

2013

I. Study Preparation:• prepare procedures (e.g. design interactive toys and games)• set up BabyLab• recruit subjects• perform pilot studies

2014

2015

II. Proper studies (n= 510):

2016

2017

Training: phoneme discrimination in native or a foreign language

Subjects: 8-10-month infants• normal hearing (n = 60)

Subjects: 6-year old children• normal hearing (n = 180)

Study S1

Post-test : EEG/ERPs; language; cognition; behavior

Subjects: 8-10-month infants• normal hearing (n = 225)• congenital hearing loss (n = 45)

Pre-test: medical, audiological examination, EEG/ERPs; language; cognition; behavior

Study S2 Study S3

Training: working memory Training: phoneme discrimination in a foreign language and working memory

Follow-up (18, 22, 25, 27, 30 months): EEG/ERPs; language; cognition; behavior

III. Data elaboration and analyses

Work Plan

General:• Creating first infant development lab in Poland.• Revolutionizing the field by novel hardware/software approaches.• Performing longitudinal infants/baby studies on a large scale.

Theoretical:• Is social interaction necessary to learn discrimination of phonemes? • Understanding neural mechanisms underlying this process.• Investigating relations between language and other cognitive functions,

such as attention and working memory, at early stages in development.

Clinical:• Diagnosing and preventing impairments of phonetic hearing and auditory

perception that might lead to learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia).

Practical:• Learning foreign languages (such as Chinese).

Implications

Slajdy dodatkowe

PI: Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

Medical University of Warsaw

Interdisciplinary board: coordination of project and all tasks

engineering, computer science, cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, neuropsychology, audiology , education, and therapy.

Planned collaboration with:Alison Gopnik Dept. of Psychology, UC Berkeley, Patricia K. Kuhl Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of WashingtonReiko Mazuka, Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, and Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, JapanGary F. Marcus, Infant Language Center, Department of Psychology, New York University

Research team of NCU Research team of IPPH

Research team of AMU Research team of MUW

Preparation, Study S1, Study S2, Study S3

Data elaboration and analysis

Background• Learning and environmental input influence the language development

e.g. Bruner, 1983; Kuhl et al., 2010; 2011• Initial learning from speech involves computational skills

e.g. Saffran, 2003• Infants learn abstract rule-like regularities more easily from speech

than from a variety of other auditory and visual stimuli Marcus et al., 2007

• Social interaction and an interest in speech importance Kuhl, 2007

• Early (ca. 1 month) phoneme discriminationKuhl,1987; Best et al., 1988

• A universal capacity to detect differences between phonetic contrasts alerted by language experience (ca. 6-10 months)

• Early phoneme discrimination predicts future language competences Kuhl et al., 2005; Fernald et al., 2006; Newman et al., 2006

• Cognitive skills are strongly linked to phonetic learning at the initial stage of phonetic development Kuhl et al., 2008