Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe 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.

AbstractThere is ample evidence of racial and gender bias in young children, but thus far this evidence comes almost exclusively from children's responses to a single social category (either race or gender). Yet we are each simultaneously members of many social categories (including our race and gender). Among adults, racial and gender biases intersect: negative racial biases are expressed more strongly against males than females. Here, we consider the developmental origin of bias at the intersection of race and gender. Relying on both implicit and explicit measures, we assessed 4‐year‐old children's responses to target images of children who varied systematically in both race (Black and White) and gender (male and female). Children revealed a strong and consistent pro‐White bias. This racial bias was expressed more strongly for males than females: children's responses to Black boys were less positive than to Black girls, White boys or White girls. This outcome, which constitutes the earliest evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, underscores the importance of addressing bias in the first years of life.

AbstractThe power and precision with which humans link language to cognition is unique to our species. By 3–4 months of age, infants have already established this link: simply listening to human language facilitates infants' success in fundamental cognitive processes. Initially, this link to cognition is also engaged by a broader set of acoustic stimuli, including non‐human primate vocalizations (but not other sounds, like backwards speech). But by 6 months, non‐human primate vocalizations no longer confer this cognitive advantage that persists for speech. What remains unknown is the mechanism by which these sounds influence infant cognition, and how this initially broader set of privileged sounds narrows to only human speech between 4 and 6 months. Here, we recorded 4‐ and 6‐month‐olds' EEG responses to acoustic stimuli whose behavioral effects on infant object categorization have been previously established: infant‐directed speech, backwards speech, and non‐human primate vocalizations. We document that by 6 months, infants' 4–9 Hz neural activity is modulated in response to infant‐directed speech and non‐human primate vocalizations (the two stimuli that initially support categorization), but that 4–9 Hz neural activity is not modulated at either age by backward speech (an acoustic stimulus that doesn't support categorization at either age). These results advance the prior behavioral evidence to suggest that by 6 months, speech and non‐human primate vocalizations elicit distinct changes in infants' cognitive state, influencing performance on foundational cognitive tasks such as object categorization.