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Effects of Seeing and Hearing Vowels on Neonatal Facial Imitation
Author(s) -
Coulon Marion,
Hemimou Cherhazad,
Streri Arlette
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1111/infa.12001
Subject(s) - imitation , psychology , perception , speech perception , facial expression , cognitive psychology , communication , social psychology , neuroscience
For several decades, many authors have claimed the existence, early in life, of a tight link between perceptual and productive systems in speech. However, the question whether this link is acquired or is already present at birth remains open. This study aimed at investigating this question by employing the paradigm of neonatal facial imitation. We compared imitative responses of newborn infants presented either visual‐only, audiovisual congruent, or audiovisual incongruent models. Our results revealed that the newborns imitated significantly more quickly the movements of the model's mouth when this model was audiovisual congruent rather than visual‐only. Moreover, when observing an audiovisual incongruent model, the newborns did not produce imitative behavior. These findings, by highlighting the influence of speech perception on newborns' imitative responses, suggest that the neural architecture for perception–production is already in place at birth. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of a link between language and neonatal imitation, which could represent a precursor of more mature forms of vocal imitation and speech development in general.