Browsing by Author "Gallen, Anastasia Victoria Charlotte"

Patricia Kuhl's hypothesis of native language neural commitment suggests that during the first year of life, linguistic exposure produces neural networks that are committed to the regularities in native language thus interfering with phonetic processing of another language. Infants begin to attend to the relevant aspects of their native language and thus native language learning is enhanced. In her social gating hypothesis Kuhl suggests that this process requires social interaction. These two hypotheses could shed light on early language disorders thus offering treatment possibilities. This review evaluates Kuhl's hypotheses in the light of brain research and developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia. Evidence from brain research suggests that infants' ability to discriminate phonemes of their native language increases while their ability to discriminate phonemes of a foreign language decreases during their first year of life. Neural commitment could be explained by maturation of the nervous system, like mechanisms of synaptic pruning and synaptic reorganization, which depend on experience. Studies suggest, that native language neural commitment might require social interaction where adult and child attend to the same object thus helping the child to connect phonemes to their targets. However, adults also speak to infants in a way that highlights the relevant acoustic aspects of speech sounds. It's likely that native language learning is enhanced especially in situations where the adult and the child attend to the same object whilst the adult also stresses the relevant acoustic aspects of speech sounds. Children with autism spectrum disorder have problems in both social cognition and language development, but the evidence supporting an association between autism spectrum disorders and problems with social gating is still scarce. Evidence from brain research suggests that in dyslexia, aberrant processing of the speech signal is connected to problems in native language neural commitment. Understanding of early native language learning enables efficient and well-timed interventions for developmental disorders. Future studies should address on how to prevent language problems by promoting native language learning of infants at risk.