Early Language Development: Bridging brain and behaviour (Trends in Language Acquisition Research)

280 Pages·2008·4.1 MB·English

by  Angela D. Friederici

Early Language Development
Trends in Language Acquisition Research
As the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Child
Language (IASCL), TiLAR presents thematic collective volumes on state-of-the-art
child language research carried out by IASCL members worldwide.
IASCL website: http://iascl.talkbank.org/
Series Editors
Annick De Houwer Steven Gillis
University of Antwerp University of Antwerp
[email protected] [email protected]
Advisory Board
Jean Berko Gleason Paul Fletcher
Boston University University College Cork
Ruth Berman Brian MacWhinney
Tel Aviv University Carnegie Mellon University
Philip Dale
University of Missouri-Columbia
Volume 5
Early Language Development. Bridging brain and behaviour
Edited by Angela D. Friederici and Guillaume Thierry
Early Language Development
Bridging brain and behaviour
Edited by
Angela D. Friederici
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Guillaume Thierry
Bangor University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Early language development : bridging brain and behaviour / edited by Angela D.
Friederici and Guillaume Thierry
p. cm. (Trends in Language Acquisition Research, issn 1569-0644 ; v. 5)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language acquisition. 2. Neurophysiology.
P118 .E22 2008
401/.93--dc22 2007038185
isbn 978 90 272 3475 9 (Hb; alk. paper)
© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
List of contributors vii
Preface i x
Introduction to early language development: Bridging brain and behavior xi
Guillaume Thierry and Angela D. Friederici
chapter 1
The method of event-related brain potentials in the study of
cognitive processes: A tutorial 1
Claudia Männel
chapter 2
Event-related potential studies of early language processing at
the phoneme, word, and sentence levels 2 3
Barbara T. Conboy, Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola, Juan Silva-Pereyra
and Patricia K. Kuhl
chapter 3
Behavioral and electrophysiological exploration of early word
segmentation in French: Distinguishing the syllabic and lexical levels 6 5
Thierry Nazzi, Galina Iakimova, Josiane Bertoncini, Sylvain Mottet,
Josette Serres and Scania de Schonen
chapter 4
Reflections on reflections of infant word recognition 9 1
Valesca Kooijman, Elizabeth K. Johnson and Anne Cutler
chapter 5
The onset of word form recognition: A behavioural and
neurophysiological study 115
Guillaume Thierry and Marilyn May Vihman
 Early Language Development: Bridging brain and behavior
chapter 6
Neurophysiological correlates of picture-word priming in one-year-olds 137
Manuela Friedrich
chapter 7
The effects of early word learning on brain development 161
Elizabeth A. Sheehan and Debra L. Mills
chapter 8
From perception to grammar 191
Jacques Mehler, Ansgar Endress, Judit Gervain and Marina Nespor
chapter 9
The development of syntactic brain correlates during the first years of life 215
Angela D. Friederici and Regine Oberecker
chapter 10
Language acquisition and ERP approaches: prospects and challenges 233
David Poeppel and Akira Omaki
Glossary 257
Index 261
List of contributors
Josiane Bertoncini
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS – Université Paris 5, France
Barbara T. Conboy
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Anne Cutler
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands
Scania de Schonen
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS – Université Paris 5, France
Ansgar Endress
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Italy
Angela D. Friederici
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany
Judit Gervain
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Italy
Galina Iakimova
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS – Université Paris 5, France
Elizabeth K. Johnson
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands
Valesca Kooijman
F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University, The Nether-
lands; Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands
Patricia K. Kuhl
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Claudia Männel
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany
 Early Language Development: Bridging brain and behavior
Jacques Mehler
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Italy
Debra L. Mills
Department of Psychology, Emory University, USA
Sylvain Mottet
Laboratoire Cognition et Comportement, CNRS – Université Paris 5, France
Thierry Nazzi
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS – Université Paris 5, France
Marina Nespor
University of Ferrara, Italy
Regine Oberecker
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany
Akira Omaki
Department of Linguistics University of Maryland College Park, USA
David Poeppel
Department of Linguistics University of Maryland College Park, USA
Elizabeth A. Sheehan
Department of Psychology, Emory University, USA
Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Josette Serres
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS – Université Paris 5, France
Juan Silva-Pereyra
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Guillaume Thierry
School of Psychology, Bangor University, UK
Marilyn May Vihman
School of Psychology, Bangor University, UK
Language and Linguistics, The University of York, UK
Preface
The present volume is the fifth in the series ‘Trends in Language Acquisition Re-
search’ (TiLAR). As an official publication of the International Association for the
Study of Child Language (IASCL), the TiLAR Series publishes two volumes per
three year period in between IASCL congresses. All volumes in the IASCL-TiLAR
Series are invited edited volumes by IASCL members that are strongly thematic in
nature and that present cutting edge work which is likely to stimulate further re-
search to the fullest extent.
Besides quality, diversity is also an important consideration in all the volumes
and in the series as a whole: diversity of theoretical and methodological approach-
es, diversity in the languages studied, diversity in the geographical and academic
backgrounds of the contributors. After all, like the IASCL itself, the IASCL-TiLAR
Series is there for child language researchers from all over the world.
The four previous TiLAR volumes were on bilingual acquisition, sign language
acquisition, language development beyond the early childhood years, and on the
link between child language disorders and developmental theory. We are particu-
larly pleased to present the current volume on neurological and behavioural ap-
proaches to the study of early language processing. We are very grateful to the
volume editors, Angela D. Friederici and Guillaume Thierry, for their willingness
to take on the task of preparing a volume on this exciting research. Dr. Friederici’s
superb keynote at the IASCL conference in Berlin in July 2005 has set the tone for
the state-of-the-art collection of high quality chapters in the present volume. Top
researchers in the field provide overviews of the main techniques, theoretical is-
sues and results pertaining to the research carried out in their laboratories.
We are proud to have this important and cutting-edge work represented in the
TiLAR series so that child language researchers from all different backgrounds
worldwide have the opportunity to become acquainted with it or get to know it
better. Because of the wide readership, and the often quite technical nature of the
subject matter, we have closely worked together with the editors to try and make
sure that the volume is sufficiently accessible, also for non-specialists. Occasion-
ally this means that particular techniques and lines of reasoning are explained
more than once. Rather than limit such overlaps, we have welcomed them. An