Chapter published in:

The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Pilar Prieto and Núria Esteve-Gibert
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 23] 2018
► pp. 79–100

Chapter 5. The role of prosody in early speech segmentation and word-referent mapping

Electrophysiological evidence

Maria Teixidó | University of Barcelona, Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology

Clément François | University of Barcelona, Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology/Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group (Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute) IDIBELL/Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD)

Laura Bosch | University of Barcelona, Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology/Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD)/Institut de Neurociències, University of Barcelona

Claudia Männel | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology and Department of Neurology/University of Leipzig, Medical Faculty, Clinic for Cognitive Neurology

This chapter reviews electrophysiological studies on early word-form segmentation and word-referent mapping, with a focus on the role of prosody in these early abilities closely related to vocabulary acquisition. First, we will review event-related brain potential (ERP) studies on word segmentation showing the impact of lexical stress cues, infant-directed speech (IDS) properties and melodic information on word-form extraction. Then, we will review research on word-referent mapping, revealing the scarcity of ERP studies specifically exploring the contribution of prosody in this domain. Throughout the chapter we will emphasize how electrophysiological methods offer a more fine-grained perspective of the brain processes supporting segmentation and mapping abilities, often revealing infants’ sensitivities to auditory input before overt responses from behavioral methods can be obtained.

Published online: 24 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.23.05tei

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