Dec 9
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Kuhl/etal:2014
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"On this view, both auditory and motor components contribute to the
developmental transition in speech perception that occurs at the end
of the first year of life."  Can we observe a similar pattern for
adult L2 learners?

The first experiment tested 7 month old and 11 month old infants, as
well as adults. However, there is no information given on the age of
the adults tested in this experiment - i.e. the ages could range
between 18 and 70.  Would the age of the adults not impact the
standardization of the data and thus the results of the experiment?

Why did the experimenter show the participants silent video during the
MEG measurement? Wouldn't it confound the results? or is it well
established that such videos do not impact results of linguistic
experiments with audio stimuli? Same goes for the assistant who waved
silent toys in front of the infant.

What is the advantage of using synthesised speech in the experiments?
The paper mentions the possible impact of "motherese" on language
acquisition - could the experiment design be adapted to more
accurately reflect the input infants receive?

Was the test repeated for the 7-mo-olds when they became 11-mo-olds?

What exactly is the oddball paradigm?

"We argue that speech production experience in the early months of
life yields a nascent auditory-articulatory map, one with properties
of an emergent "schema" that goes beyond specific action sound
pairings to specify generative rules relating articulatory movements
to sound. I would be interested to know if mute infants or those with
anatomical changes in the speech tract show differences in the
activation of motor brain areas compared to those observed in the
experiments

The results of Exp.1 show: greater activation in auditory areas for
native speech and greater activation in motor brain areas for
nonnative speech. How to understand these two changes?

What are the benefits of using computer synthesized stimuli instead of
stimuli produced by a native speaker?

Can we consider motherese to be a subset of the social gating aspect
discussed in the paper? I view the way adults talk to children as a
factor in their overall social environment, so I was wondering if
separating these make sense or not