Parents' neural dynamics in response to their children's speech

Abstract

The development of speech in human children is a protracted process that depends on social experience. From early life, young children produce vocalizations in the presence of others, which affords unique opportunities for feedback about how to communicate successfully. However, for feedback to happen, young childrens speech needs to effect change in the brains of their caregivers. Using dual-brain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure real-time communication between caregivers and their 2- to 3-year-old children (n = 56), we found that children's vocalizations selectively modulated caregivers' brain activity. Parents' brains showed a rapid response to children's production of speech that was communicatively advanced (multiword utterances) vs. less advanced (babble). The findings imply that if part of learning to talk is figuring out how to get your communication partner to listen, then early conversations likely present continuous opportunities for feedback that guide children toward advances in spoken language.