title: Detecting violations of temporal regularities in waking and sleeping two-month-old infants.
abstract: Correctly processing rapid sequences of sounds is essential for developmental milestones, such as language acquisition. We investigated the sensitivity of two-month-old infants to violations of a temporal regularity, by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an auditory oddball paradigm from 36 waking and 40 sleeping infants. Standard tones were presented at a regular 300 ms inter-stimulus interval (ISI). One deviant, otherwise identical to the standard, was preceded by a 100 ms ISI. Two other deviants, presented with the standard ISI, differed from the standard in their spectral makeup. We found significant differences between ERP responses elicited by the standard and each of the deviant sounds. The results suggest that the ability to extract both temporal and spectral regularities from a sound sequence is already functional within the first few months of life. The scalp distribution of all three deviant-stimulus responses was influenced by the infants' state of alertness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Otte
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Winkler
authors.forename: M A K A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Braeken
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Stekelenburg
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: van der Stelt
authors.forename: B R H
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Van den Bergh
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000162:Acoustics; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology*