Developmental changes of brain responses and discrimination ability for Japanese special morae in infants

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25580104
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokushima
• Principal Investigator: Sato Yutaka 徳島大学, 大学院ソシオ・アーツ・アンド・サイエンス研究部, 准教授 (80415174)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): YAMANE NAOTO 国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, BSI, 研究員 (60550192)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 言語発達 / 特殊モーラ / 弁別 / 近赤外分光法（NIRS)

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Japanese has special morae as components of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. In this study, we measured the neural and behavioral development of Japanese infants for the distinction of special morae. The results showed that Japanese infants acquired discrimination ability for long-short vowel contrasts and single/geminate obstruents at around 10 months of age, and that they did for other contrasts at earlier than 10 months of age. The results of the measurement of brain responses indicated that the timing of the left-shift varies according to the special morae. These results suggest that the developmental course differs among the moraic phonemes.

Free Research Field

認知心理学