Aurreko ekintzak: Claudia Männel. Electrophysiology of early language acquisition

What: Electrophysiology as a window into (a)typical language development

Where: BCBL auditorium and BCBL zoom room 2. (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Claudia Männel, PhD, Research group leader and Professorship, Early Language Acquisition, Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany; Research Associate, Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.

When:  Thursday, October 27th, 2:30 PM

Language acquisition starts well before birth and infants take crucial language acquisition steps during their first year of life. These early abilities are the basis for subsequent acquisition steps and can show cascade effects on educational achievements. Here, the early processing of phonological information (i.e., acoustic modulations at the syllable, word, and phrase levels) takes a pivotal role for the acquisition of a language’s lexicon and syntax: Phonological parameters, such as rhythm and intonation, mark words and word groups in the speech input; moreover, phonological markers characterize morpho-syntactic relations between subjects, verbs, and objects. In the last decades, the advent of neuroimaging techniques, especially electrophysiology, in developmental cognitive neuroscience, has provided new grounds for the study of early language acquisition. Long before infants produce their first words and show reliable behavioral expressions of their abilities, can electrophysiological brain responses signal infants’ arising speech and language processing. In this presentation, I will sketch a series of electrophysiological studies on infants’ phonological abilities as stepping-stones into their lexicon and syntax acquisition.