Sound symbolism processing is lateralized to the right temporal region in the prelinguistic infant brain

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 13435 - 10
• Main Authors: Yang, Jiale, Asano, Michiko, Kanazawa, So, Yamaguchi, Masami K., Imai, Mutsumi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 17.09.2019; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/378/2612; 631/378/3917; 631/477/2811; Acoustic Stimulation; Auditory Perception - physiology; Cortex; Cross-modal; Female; Functional Laterality; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Infant; Infants; Infrared spectroscopy; Language Development; Male; multidisciplinary; Nontherapeutic Human Experimentation; Photic Stimulation; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sensorimotor integration; Sensory integration; Sound; Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared; Speech Perception - physiology; Superior temporal sulcus; Symbolism; Temporal Lobe - physiology; Visual stimuli

Sound symbolism, which is the systematic and non-arbitrary link between a word and its meaning, has been suggested to bootstrap language acquisition in infants. However, it is unclear how sound symbolism is processed in the infants’ brain. To address this issue, we investigated the cortical response...