Influence of early experience of speech and language on their processing and neural representation: A study of hearing infants with deaf mothers

Mercure, Evelyne (2018). Influence of early experience of speech and language on their processing and neural representation: A study of hearing infants with deaf mothers. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852916

This project aims to determine the impact of early speech and language experience on language processing and representation in the brain. It will study hearing infants of deaf mothers who use a sign language as their dominant language (HoD infants) in comparison to hearing infants of hearing mothers (HoH infants). Despite normal hearing, HoD infants have a different early experience of speech and language to that of HoH infants. First, since deaf signing mothers are less likely to use auditory speech than hearing mothers, their infants are likely to have reduced exposure to auditory spoken language. Second, the experience of HoD infants includes both a language in the visual modality, eg British Sign Language (BSL), and one in the auditory modality, eg English. Since HoD infants are exposed to two languages, they will be compared to HoH individuals who are exposed to two spoken languages. This project will use near infrared spectroscopy and eye-tracking to test the hypothesis that the experience of HoD infants influence their neural representation of language, their patterns of eye gaze during spoken and signed language perception and their audio-visual speech integration.

Data description (abstract)

The aim of this project was to determine the impact of early speech and language experience on language processing and neural representation. In this project, I have studied hearing infants of Deaf signing mothers in comparison to monolingual and bilingual hearing infants of hearing mothers. I have collected behavioural, eye-tracking and neuroimaging data from 99 4-to-8 month old infants from 3 groups: monolinguals, unimodal bilingual and bimodal bilinguals. Here is a brief description of the data collected in this project. Mullen Scales of Early Learning: A standardised developmental assessment of receptive and expressive language, visual reception, dexterity and gross motricity. Each infant was assessed by a trained experimenter and each assessment was filmed for off-line coding. Parent-Child Interaction: Parents were asked to 'play with their baby as they would do at home'. Interactions were filmed for off-line coding of attachment and communication in each parent-infant dyad.

Downloads

Altmetric