NeuroPerKog: development of phonematic hearing & working memory in infants & children Włodzisław Duch & many good brains from: 1. Nicolaus Copernicus University, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Toruń 2. World Hearing Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Kajetany, Warsaw 3. Medical University of Warsaw; Clinic of the Developmental Age Psychiatry 4. Adam Mickiewicz University, Institute of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures; Poznań + collaborators from the Chair of Cognitive Psychology, Warsaw University, Institute of Mother and Child, Warsaw, Polish Academy of Science. 5 years/30 people, not including collaborators from foreign institutions.

General motivation I was trying to realize such project since 1997 (Active stimulation of speech, Polish patent no , granted in 2002, dropped in 2007). Started Polish Cognitive Science Society, first CS journal in Poland (1998), teaching CS courses, created neurocognitive lab starting in Oct In 2013/14 we shall have MSc projects and then PhD students in CS. General goal: understand whether interactive systems providing direct rewards may help to develop better perception, working memory, how this will influence cognitive development of infants and children in a semi-supervised way, first time in the history! Creating conditions that will encourage optimal development of infants and babies.

Main research goals  Study the regularities of language acquisition Create novel interactive cribs and toys, stimulating/rewarding infants to avoid perceptual errors. Determine the role of early training in phoneme discrimination - longitudinal study: 18, 22, 25, 27, 30 months Understand how the early training will influence language competence and working memory in the later period - longitudinal study: 18, 22, 25, 27, 30 months Test the influence of immediate rewards on comprehension of speech in children after cochlear implantation. - longitudinal case study

Studies Novel hardwareInformatics Three Pillars

Studies Novel hardwareInformatics Three Pillars

2013 I. Study Preparation: prepare procedures (e.g. design interactive toys and games) set up BabyLab recruit subjects perform pilot studies II. Proper studies (n= 510): Training: phoneme discrimination in native or a foreign language Subjects: 8-10-month infants normal hearing (n = 60) Subjects: 6-year old children normal hearing (n = 180) Study S1 Post-test : EEG/ERPs; language; cognition; behavior Subjects: 8-10-month infants normal hearing (n = 225) congenital hearing loss (n = 45) Pre-test: medical, audiological examination, EEG/ERPs; language; cognition; behavior Study S2Study S3 Training: working memoryTraining: phoneme discrimination in a foreign language and working memory Follow-up (18, 22, 25, 27, 30 months): EEG/ERPs; language; cognition; behavior III. Data elaboration and analyses Work Plan

General: Creating first infant development lab in Poland. Revolutionizing the field by novel hardware/software approaches. Performing longitudinal infants/baby studies on a large scale. Theoretical: Is social interaction necessary to learn discrimination of phonemes? Understanding neural mechanisms underlying this process. Investigating relations between language and other cognitive functions, such as attention and working memory, at early stages in development. Clinical: Diagnosing and preventing impairments of phonetic hearing and auditory perception that might lead to learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia). Practical: Learning foreign languages (such as Chinese). Implications

Slajdy dodatkowe

PI: Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Medical University of Warsaw Interdisciplinary board: coordination of project and all tasks engineering, computer science, cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, neuropsychology, audiology, education, and therapy. Planned collaboration with: Alison Gopnik Dept. of Psychology, UC Berkeley, Patricia K. Kuhl Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington Reiko Mazuka, Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, and Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Japan Gary F. Marcus, Infant Language Center, Department of Psychology, New York University Research team of NCUResearch team of IPPH Research team of AMUResearch team of MUW Preparation, Study S1, Study S2, Study S3 Data elaboration and analysis

Background Learning and environmental input influence the language development e.g. Bruner, 1983; Kuhl et al., 2010; 2011 Initial learning from speech involves computational skills e.g. Saffran, 2003 Infants learn abstract rule-like regularities more easily from speech than from a variety of other auditory and visual stimuli Marcus et al., 2007 Social interaction and an interest in speech importance Kuhl, 2007 Early (ca. 1 month) phoneme discrimination Kuhl,1987; Best et al., 1988 A universal capacity to detect differences between phonetic contrasts alerted by language experience (ca months) Early phoneme discrimination predicts future language competences Kuhl et al., 2005; Fernald et al., 2006; Newman et al., 2006 Cognitive skills are strongly linked to phonetic learning at the initial stage of phonetic development Kuhl et al., 2008