Infants learn novel words faster from maternal speech: electrophysiological and eyetracking evidence from two infant samples

Junge, C.

Utecht University

The maternal voice plays a special role in language acquisition. It is the only voice that neonates have most experience with and prefer over any other voice. Maternal speech also facilitates language processing, and increases activation in brain areas related to language and attention. But does this advantage also extend to novel word learning? The current paper addresses this question in two ways.
First, we used ERPs to capture the learning process of word learning in 11-month-olds (n=44). Half listened to their own mother?s voice; others listened to the same pre-recorded stimuli (e.g., for them, unfamiliar voice). Both voice conditions show an increase of N200-500 during word encoding. This increase is larger in the maternal voice condition, mainly driven by the first set of words. This finding possibly reflects that infants treat mother?s first occurrences of novel words as highly unfamiliar.
Second, we used eye-tracking to test two-year-olds? (n=73) word-learning abilities in a live setting. Results show that children who learn from their mothers learn words at a faster rate. Moreover, these children repeated the novel words more frequently, which suggests a higher task-engagement.
Together, results show that maternal voice boosts both word encoding and word-to-object mapping.