Effects of enriched auditory experience on infants’ speech perception during the first year of life

Infants rapidly learn language in their home environments. between 6 and 12 months of age,infants’ ability to process the building blocks of speech (i.e.,phonetic information) develops quickly,and this ability predicts later language development. typically,developing infants in a monolingual language environment rapidly tune in to the phonetic information of their native language,while their sensitivity to nonnative phonetic information starts to decrease. yet,enriched experience to a new language during this time significantly improves infants’ sensitivity to the sound contrasts used in that language when compared to a control group without exposure to the new language. more recently,a new study examined another type of enriched auditory experience—musical experience—to determine its effect not only on music processing but also on phonetic processing. results showed that a 1-month laboratory music intervention focusing on rhythm learning enhanced 9-month-old infants’ neural processing not only for music but also for speech. together,these results suggest that these enriched auditory experiences in infancy may improve infants’ general auditory pattern-detection skills and their sensitivity to phonetic information. © 2017,the author(s).