Washington, Mar 27 (ANI): Babies as young as 7 months old can discern a voice”s emotional state, suggests a new study.
The new research found that the brains of infants demonstrate a sensitivity to the human voice and to emotions communicated through the voice that is remarkably similar to what is observed in the brains of adults.
The study, published by Cell Press in the March 25 issue of the journal Neuron, probes the origins of voice processing in the human brain and may provide important insight into neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
Dr. Tobias Grossmann from the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at the University of London led the study which was performed in Dr. Angela D. Friederici”s laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany.
The researchers used near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate when during development regions in temporal cortex become specifically sensitive to the human voice. These specific cortical regions have been shown to play a key role in processing spoken language in adults.
Grossmann and colleagues observed that 7-month-olds but not 4-month-olds showed adult-like increased responses in the temporal cortex in response to the human voice when compared to nonvocal sounds, suggesting that voice sensitivity emerges between 4 and 7 months of age.
Another important question addressed in this study was whether activity in infants” voice-sensitive brain regions is modulated by emotional prosody. Prosody, essentially the “music” of speech, can reflect the feelings of the speaker, thereby helping to convey the context of language. In humans, sensitivity to emotional prosody is crucial for social communication.
The researchers observed that a voice-sensitive region in the right temporal cortex showed increased activity when 7-month-old infants listened to words spoken with emotional (angry or happy) prosody. Such a modulation of brain activity by emotional signals is thought to be a fundamental brain mechanism to prioritize the processing of significant stimuli in the environment.
“Our findings demonstrate that voice-sensitive brain regions are already specialized and modulated by emotional information by the age of 7 months and raise the possibility that the critical neurodevelopmental processes underlying impaired voice-processing reported in disorders like autism might occur before 7 months,” explains Dr. Grossmann. “Therefore, in future work the current approach could be used to assess individual differences in infants” responses to voices and emotional prosody and might thus serve as one of potentially multiple markers that can help with an early identification of infants at risk for a neurodevelopmental disorder.” (ANI)
Spanking found to have negative effects on low-income toddlers
Washington, September 16 (ANI): Spanking negatively affects the behaviour of toddlers in low-income families, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Child Development, the longitudinal study looked at how low-income parents discipline their young children.
It showed that spanking 1-year-olds leads to more aggressive behaviours and less sophisticated cognitive development in the next two years.
Verbal punishment, however, was not found to be associated with such effects, especially when it was accompanied by emotional support from mothers.
Besides, 1-year-olds’ fussiness predicted spanking and verbal punishment at ages 1, 2, and 3.
The study explored whether mothers’ behaviours lead to problematic behaviour in children, whether children’s challenging behaviours elicit harsher discipline, or both.
It looked at more than 2,500 exclusively low-income White, African American, and Mexican-American mothers and their young children, interviewing and observing them at home when the children were 1, 2, and 3 years old.
All participants’ family incomes were at or below the federal poverty level.
Using their own interpretations of spanking, mothers reported how often anyone in the home had spanked their children in the past week.
The study also looked at how often mothers verbally punished-scolded, yelled, or made negative comments-their children.
It showed that African American children were spanked and verbally punished significantly more than the other children in the study.
The authors speculated that that might be due to cultural factors, such as belief in the importance of children’s respect for elders and in the value of physical discipline to instil that respect.
Moreover, some African American mothers said that in preparing their children for a harsh, physically dangerous, and racially discriminating world, there was little room for error in their childrearing.
The study also shed light on information about the effects of such types of discipline.
“Our findings clearly indicate that spanking affects children’s development,” said Lisa J. Berlin, research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and the study’s lead author.
Specifically, children who were spanked more often at 1 behaved more aggressively when they were 2, and had lower scores on tests measuring thinking skills when they were 3.
Similar findings were made even after taking into consideration such family characteristics as mothers’ race and ethnicity, age, and education; family income and structure; and the children’s gender.
The study also found that children who were more aggressive at age 2, and had lower cognitive development scores at ages 1 and 2, were not spanked more at ages 2 and 3.
“So the mothers’ behaviours look more influential than the children’s,” said Berlin.
Unlike spanking, however, verbal punishment alone didn’t affect either children’s aggression or their cognitive development.
Interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, the children did better on the tests of cognitive ability. (ANI)