Do newborns detect prosodic violations in an unfamiliar language at birth

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7148372
AutoresCaterina Marino (0000-0002-9292-1549, University of Padua, autor de correspondencia), Jessica Gemignani (University of Padua), Marcela Peña (0000-0002-6027-9280, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Anna Martinez-Alvarez, Anna Martinez‐Alvarez (0000-0001-5551-8171, University of Padua), Luca Bonadies (0000-0001-7700-3056, Città della Speranza Foundation), Eugenio Baraldi (0000-0002-1829-3652, Città della Speranza Foundation), Judit Gervain (0000-0002-2125-6369, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
Año2025
Volumen271
Páginas105640
Fecha de publicación2025-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBrain and Language (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0093-934X • E-ISSN: 1090-2155
EditorialElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.bandl.2025.105640
PMID40946376
OpenAlexW4414167669
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas40

Experience with language starts prenatally, as the intrauterine environment allows speech prosody to get through. Martinez-Alvarez and colleagues (2023) demonstrated that newborns detect utterance-level prosodic violations in the language they heard prenatally, French. It remains unknown, however, whether this discrimination ability requires prenatal experience with a given language or whether newborns have an early sensitivity to the shapes of prosodic contours that extends beyond prenatal experience. To this purpose, we tested infants exposed prenatally to Italian with the French stimuli of Martinez-Alvarez et al. (2023), and we measured their brain responses with fNIRS. We found that Italian-exposed newborns discriminate between standard and deviant prosodic contours in French, activating right hemispheric areas specialized for the processing of prosody in adults. However, the time course and the localization of the effect were different from those found in French newborns. This suggests that an early sensitivity to prosodic contours may be modulated by prenatal experience at birth

Intonation (linguistics) · Language development · Prosody · Sensitivity (control systems) · Child Development and Digital Technology · Infant Health and Development · Language Development and Disorders