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Newborns’ Neural Tuning in to the Native Language is Funneled by Infant-directed Speech
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Martina Dvorakova1,2, Josef Urbanec1,3, Jan Kremláček2, Kateřina Chládková1,2; 1Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2Charles University, Czech Republic, 3Havlíčkův Brod Hospital, Czech Republic
Infants show a behavioral preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS) in their native language, and recent work suggests that this preference is also reflected at the neural level. Most studies of infants’ neural responses to speech use IDS stimuli, yet it remains unclear whether IDS exaggerates or attenuates language-specific characteristics. Here, we test whether newborns show differential neural tracking of a native versus a non-native unfamiliar language, and whether such language effects differ between IDS and ADS. We measured neural speech tracking in Czech-learning newborns (n = 60; 2–7 days old) using EEG recorded during sleep from six fronto-central channels. Infants listened to natural recordings of a children’s story in their native language, Czech (with weak acoustic cues to word-level stress), and in a rhythmically distinct unfamiliar language, Russian (with acoustically salient word-level stress), presented either in IDS or ADS (between subjects). Neural tracking was quantified using multivariate temporal response functions (mTRFs) in the delta and theta frequency bands, corresponding to word- and syllable-level rhythms, respectively. mTRF values were analysed in linear mixed effects models with Band (delta vs theta), Condition (Czech vs Russian), Register (ADS vs IDS), and their interactions as fixed factors and per-participant random intercepts. The model revealed significant effects of Register, showing more tracking in IDS than in ADS (β = 0.008, SE = 0.003, t(41) = 2.865, p = .007); main effect of Condition showing stronger neural tracking of Czech speech than Russian speech (β = –0.005, SE = 0.002, t(123) = –2.219, p = .029), and main effect of Band showing overall stronger tracking in delta band than in theta band (β = –0.024, SE = 0.002, t(123) = –11.462, p < .001). These main effects were consolidated in a significant interaction of Register * Condition * Band. Overall, newborns exhibited stronger neural tracking of their native language than of a foreign language in IDS, while this effect was smaller or maybe not even present in ADS. The observed delta-band dominance further indicates that early speech processing is grounded in sensitivity to slow temporal structure, which may provide a foundational mechanism for subsequent segmentation, attentional organization, and the development of more fine-grained linguistic representations. Together, these findings indicate that sensitivity to slow temporal structure may provide a scaffolding for the development of more fine-grained speech and language processing mechanisms later in infancy.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Speech Perception