Artículos de revistas
Language acquisition in premature and full-term infants
Fecha
2010-02-23Registro en:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS February 23, 2010 vol. 107 no. 8 3823-3828
doi/10.1073/pnas.0914326107
Autor
Peña, Marcela
Pittaluga, Enrica
Mehler, Jacques
Institución
Resumen
We tested healthy preterm (born near 28 ± 2 weeks of gestational
age) and full-term infants at various different ages. We compared
the two populations on the development of a language acquisition
landmark, namely, the ability to distinguish the native language
from a rhythmically similar one. This ability is attained 4 months
after birth in healthy full-term infants. We measured the induced
gamma-band power associated with passive listening to (i) the
infants’ native language (Spanish), (ii) a rhythmically close language
(Italian), and (iii) a rhythmically distant language (Japanese) as a
marker of gains in language discrimination. Preterm and full-term
infants were matched for neural maturation and duration of exposure
to broadcast speech.Wefound that both full-term and preterm
infants only display a response to native speech near 6 months after
their term age. Neural maturation seems to constrain advances in
speech discrimination at early stages of language acquisition.