Ear Hear Frontiers June10

Neural Indices of vowel discrimination
1 COVER LETTER
2
3 Author Contribution Statements:
4 V.L.S. designed the experiments, analyzed data and wrote the main paper; Y.H.Y. collected and
5 analyzed the data, and wrote part of the paper. C.T. collected the data and played an important
6 part on revising the paper, L.C. performed the Mixed Effect Modeling analysis, N.V., J.G., K.G.
7 and H.D. collected data, and provided comments on the manuscript at all stages.
8
9
1
10 Summary (< 100 words):

11 The current study was to determine how biological factors (cortical maturation) versus an Yu, Yan 6/2/2015 11:40 AM
12 experiential factor (amount of Spanish input) affect neural processing of an English vowel Comment [1]: Third person, active voice
13 contrast [] versus [I]. The Electrophysiological Mismatch Responses (MMRs) served as indices
14 of vowel discrimination to American English vowels in monolingually- (English) and bilingually-
15 (Spanish-English) exposed children between 3 months and 47 months of age. Results from both
16 the longitudinal and cross-sectional data revealed that the MMR became more negative at a
17 rapid rate during the first year, and bilingual language experience is not a significant predictor
18 of MMR amplitude in these children.
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20
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21 Neural indices of vowel discrimination in monolingual and bilingual infants and children
22 Yu, Yan 6/2/2015 11:21 AM
Comment [2]: This first page need to be in a
23 separate file.
24 Yan H. Yu1, Carol Tessel2, Luca Campanelli3, Nancy Vidal3, Jennifer Gerometta4, Karen
25 Garrido-Nag5, Hia Datta6, Valerie L. Shafer3
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1
27 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, St. Johns University, Queens, NY,
28 USA
2
29 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Florida Atlantic University, Boca
30 Raton, FL, USA
3
31 Ph.D. Program in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciencs, The Graduate Center, City University of
32 New York, New York, NY, USA
4
33 Speech Communication Studies, Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, USA
5
34 Hearing, Speech, Language Sciences, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA
6
35 Speech-Language Pathology, Molloy College, Rockville Centre, NY, USA
36
Financial Disclosures/Conflicts of Interest: 37
38
This research was funded by the National Institute of Health. 39
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44 Address correspondence to Valerie L. Shafer, Ph.D. Program in Speech-Language-Hearing
45 Sciences, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
46 10016, USA. Telephone: 212-817-8800, Fax: 212-817-1437, Email: vshafer@gc.cuny.edu
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50
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51 Abstract
Yu, Yan 6/2/2015 11:55 AM
Comment [3]: < 500 words, Must be submitted
52 OBJECTIVES: To identify neurophysiological markers of speech discrimination and to separately online, must not include key words
53 determine how biological factors (cortical maturation) versus an experiential factor (amount of
54 Spanish input) affect neural processing of an English vowel contrast [] versus [I].
55 DESIGN: Electrophysiological Mismatch Responses (MMRs) were used as indices of vowel

56 discrimination to American English vowels in infants and children between 3 months and 47
57 months of age. A total of 168 longitudinal and cross-sectional data sets were collected from 98
58 children (Bilingual Spanish-English: 47 males and 31 females sessions; Monolingual English: 48
59 males and 42 female sessions). The Amount of Spanish exposure and other language measures
60 were collected. MMRs were examined in the early (200-360 ms) and late (520-600ms) time
61 window.
62 RESULTS: The longitudinal and cross-sectional data were somewhat similar, in that the MMR
63 was more positive for younger than older infants. The MMR became more negative at a rapid
64 rate during the first year, and then leveled off from two to four years of age. Our findings
65 revealed that maturational factors, measured via age and sex, have a significant effect on MMRs.
66 Bilingual language experience is not a significant predictor of MMR amplitude in these
67 children.
68 CONCLUSIONS: Biological factors such as age and sex have a stronger influence on the
69 amplitude of MMR during the first 1.5 years. The lack of an effect of bilingual exposure on
70 processing of the /I/ versus / / vowel contrast may be because these children were receiving
71 sufficient exposure to English and because Spanish prosody is sufficiently different from English
72 to allow the children to keep the two languages separate.
Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 1:03 PM
77 Deleted:
73 Key Words: speech development, bilingual, auditory processing, Event-related potentials,
74 Mismatch negativity, Mismatch response, infants Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:58 PM
Comment [4]: The manual says Do not include
keywords, but I see Keywords appeared in
75 recent E H articles.
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78 Introduction
79 First language acquisition had been characterized as rapid and effortless in the early
80 writings of Noam Chomsky (Chomsky, 1975, p. 4), but it has become clear that this
81 characterization does not capture the nature of this process. A childs first spoken words do not
82 appear until around one year after birth. The child faces a challenging task during the first year
83 that leads up to comprehension and production of first words, namely acquiring speech
84 perception skills that will allow segmentation of the speech signal and recovery of word
85 meaning. In the following years, the child continues to refine speech perception skills, as he or
86 she acquires new words and the grammar of the language(s) of the ambient environment.
87 Considerable research has plotted the time course of first-language speech perception
88 development and revealed that experience with a language influences how the infant categorizes
89 speech from birth (and even in the womb), as measured in behavioral preference and novelty
90 tasks (Best, et al., 1982; DeCasper et al., 1994; Kuhl et al., 1992). By one year of age, children
91 have learned which phonological patterns are contrastive (phonemes) in the native language and
92 already show sensitivity to language-specific phonological information (e.g., Werker & Tees,
93 1983; Jusczyk, et al., 1994). However, one-year-old phonologies are still quite immature. For
94 example, under more difficult task conditions, children do not show phoneme discrimination
95 abilities until around 18 months of age (e.g., Werker, et al., 2002).
96 Immaturity of phonological systems is likely to arise from insufficient experience and an
97 immature auditory cortex. Studies of speech perception development have largely focused on the
98 former variable. More recent models have acknowledged the importance of considering the
99 developmental level of a child when interpreting speech perception results (Werker &d Curtin,
100 2005; Curtin, et al., 2011). Taking this a step further, we argue that it is important to consider the
101 maturational level of the auditory cortex to more fully understand the timecourse of phonological
102 development.
103 Studies of neural maturation of the auditory system reveal considerable cortical
104 immaturity before six months of age (e.g., Moore & Linthicum, 2007). Cortical immaturity is
105 seen as neurons with fewer dendritic spines, fewer axon collaterals, incomplete axonal
106 myelination and sparse dendritic branching. As the child matures, an increasing number of axon
107 collaterals and dendritic branches will be perceptible, and increases in axonal myelination will
108 allow for faster and more efficient auditory processing. Thus, internal, biological factors
109 constrain the rate of auditory cortical maturation (Moore & Lithicum, 2007). Structural measures
110 of auditory cortical maturation (e.g., number of axon collaterals, amount of myelination) and
111 functional measures of maturation (e.g., latency and topography of obligatory, auditory
112 components) indicate that age is strongly correlated with cortical maturation (Moore & Lithicum,
113 2007; Shafer et al., 2014). Considerable structural and functional maturation of the auditory
114 cortex occurs during the first year of life, with the rate of maturation slowing through the
115 preschool and into the grade-school years (Moore & Lithicum, 2007; Shafer, et al., 2014).
116 Studies of children with congenital deafness followed by cochlear implant indicate that early
117 input also plays a role in maturation of the auditory system (Sharma, et al., 2002). What is less
118 clear is the degree to which the characteristics of the input (e.g., monolingual versus bilingual
119 speech input) modulate auditory development.
120 An additional source of evidence for biological factors constraining maturation comes
121 from studies of sex differences. Sex differences during prenatal and early infancy period have
122 been observed (Basic sensory difference: see Alexander & Wilcox, 2012 for a review; Oral-
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123 motor function: Miller et al., 2006; Nagy et al., 2007). Male and female infants show different
124 rates of cortical maturation driven by differing levels of sex hormones (e.g., testosterone:
125 Friederici et al., 2008; Shucard et al.,1981; Shucard & Shucard, 1990). In particular, female
126 infants initially showed more rapid maturation of left cortical regions and male infants of right
127 cortical regions; furthermore, female infants generally showed a more rapid rate of maturation
128 (Shucard & Shucard, 1990). These differences in maturation could reflect processing in the
129 auditory cortex, and/or in frontal networks involved in memory and attention. Friederici et al.
130 (2008) found that female infants with low levels of testosterone showed bilateral discriminative
131 responses to a speech contrast; male infants with low levels of testosterone showed left dominant
132 responses, whereas male infants with high levels of testosterone showed absence of
133 discriminative responses. Irrespective of the exact underlying sources of these sex differences
134 related to cortical maturation, these studies reveal that differences in cortical maturation can be
135 inferred from findings of sex differences.
136 One goal of the current paper is to examine how level of maturity modulates speech
137 processing development throughout the period in which the child is mastering language (infancy
138 to four years of age). We test the hypothesis that level of brain maturation, as well as experience,
139 constrain speech-processing development using the Event-related Potential method.
140 Central auditory discrimination in adults is indexed primarily by the Event-related
141 Potential (ERP) components, named mismatch negativity (MMN), N2b and P300 (P3a and P3b).
142 MMN reflects change detection from a cortical auditory sound representation. This MMN is seen
143 as increased negativity at frontocentral sites to an infrequent stimulus change, and generally
144 peaks between 100 and 300 ms following the change in adults. MMN latency and amplitude is
145 dependent on the discrimination difficulty. Increased positivity following the MMN, called the
146 P3a, reflects orienting to the stimulus change. The P3a is only found in paradigms where the
147 infrequent stimulus is not a task target, for example, in a passive task (Polich, 1986, 2007). In
148 tasks where the infrequent stimulus is a target (e.g., tasks asking the participant to count the
149 target stimuli), the N2b and P3b are elicited. The current study focuses on the components
150 elicited in a passive task, with the assumption that infants and young children are not treating
151 infrequent stimulus changes as targets (thereby eliciting N2b and P3b).
152 These various adult responses have specific topographies (distributions across the scalp)
153 that are determined by the neural sources contributing to the response and that can be used to
154 help identify the response. For example, MMN is most negative at frontocentral sites (top of the
155 head) and inverts in polarity (i.e., is relatively positive) at inferior-posterior sites. In contrast, the
156 N2b is most negative at central sites, and does not show inversion at inferior posterior sites
157 (Sussman, et al., 2002; Sussman et al., 2004). Grade-school children show somewhat similar
158 patterns to adults, but at later latencies (Shafer, et al., 2000; Gomes, et al. 1999).
159 Children younger than approximately six years of age show a different pattern of
160 discriminative responses compared to older children and adults. Infants typically show a positive
161 mismatch response (pMMR) in a passive oddball paradigm (Dehaene-Lambertz & Baillet, 1998;
162 Dehaene-Lambertz & Dehaene, 1994; Lee et al., 2012; Morr, et al., 2002; Friederici et al, 2007;
163 Partanen, et al., 2013a; Partanen, et al., 2013b; Shafer et al., 2012), although a few studies have
164 also shown negative responses (e.g., Cheour, et al., 1998). With increasing age, this pMMR
165 declines in amplitude and a negative MMR emerges between three and four years of age (Shafer,
166 et al., 2010; 2011).
167 Several studies reveal that the pMMR and nMMR can co-occur in very young children
168 (Morr, et al., 2002; Friederici, et al., 2002; Kushnerenko, et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2012; Shafer, et
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169 al., 2010; Shafer, et al., 2012). The nMMR emerges over the right central sites in four-year-olds,
170 while the pMMR remains robustly present over left frontal sites (Shafer, et al., 2010). With
171 increasing age, the nMMR increased in amplitude, while the pMMR decreased in amplitude. In
172 addition, both the pMMR and nMMR shift earlier in time with increasing age, until the pMMR is
173 no longer apparent around seven years of age (Shafer, et al., 2010; 2011). Different MMR
174 topographies were observed from the older four- to seven-year old children, in that MMN
175 negativity is larger over right sites and with increasing age, the positive MMR over left sites
176 becomes more negative and is replaced by a negative response around seven years of age
177 (Shafer, et al., 2010). There is some evidence that the MMN may occur quite late in time (500
178 and 600 ms) in infants at six-month of age (Shafer et al., 2012). We have proposed that the
179 pMMR reflects new afferent input and the nMMR is the MMN (Shafer, et al., 2010; 2012). Yu, Yan 6/9/2015 10:41 AM
215 Deleted: Specifically, Shafer, et al. (2012) observed
180 Older children may also show a second negative peak, called the late negativity (LN), 216 an increased frontocentral negativity to a deviant
181 between 400 and 600 ms (e.g., eponien, et al., 2003; Shafer et al., 2005; Datta, et al., 2010). 217 vowel in 6 month old infants, but only when the
182 Thus, it is possible that a negative MMR in the late time interval observed in infants and toddlers 218
219
deviant was in the final position of a sequence of ten
stimuli (Shafer, et al., 2012). They suggested that
183 is the LN. Examination of the MMR in the later interval in the children from Shafer et al. (2010) 220 attention was drawn to this final position and
184 shows a second peak of negativity consistent with the LN. It is possible that this LN reflects a 221222
allowed the infants to resolve the stimulus
differences.
185 similar discriminative process to that indexed by the MMN, but it is later because it indicates Yu, Yan 6/9/2015 10:42 AM
186 discrimination of a more-difficult, acoustic difference between speech sounds. 223 Deleted: Support for this claim comes from
187 Cross linguistic studies of speech perception have shown that listeners often have 224 evidence suggesting that for a difficult stimulus
225 contrast, increased negativity to the deviant (i.e.,
188 difficulty discriminating and categorizing non-native phonological contrasts not found in the first 226 nMMR) is observed only when attention is focused
189 language (e.g., Werker & Tees, 1984; Best, 1985). In the case of second-language (L2) learning, 227 on the stimulus change (Shafer, et al., 2012; Garrido-
228 Nag, 2012). Some recent studies also revealed that
190 late learners of an L2 (after approximately 11 years of age) also may show poor L2 speech 229 attention modulates the mismatch responses (Hisagi,
191 perception (e.g., Strange, 2011). In contrast, early learning of an L2 results in better behavioral 230 et al., 2012; Sussman, 2013).
192 perception of L2 phonological contrasts (e.g., Flege, 1995; Sundara & Poka, 2008; Gonzales &
193 Lotto, 2013). Some studies, however, suggest that even early learning of an L2 (before five years
194 of age) results in differences in L2 speech perception, as compared to monolingual listeners (e.g.,
195 Hisagi, et al., 2014). Understanding the factors that influence L2 speech perception in adult
196 bilinguals who had learned the L2 early in life is a challenging task. Previous studies have
197 shown that amount of input in the first language (L1) versus the second language (L2) is likely to
198 be a major factor (Flege, 1995; Flege & Mackay, 2004). Thus, examining L2 speech perception
199 in the time period when amount of input can be better evaluated is desirable.
200 Studies of bilingual language development in infants have shown that the speech
201 processing in one or both of a bilinguals languages can be delayed if the two languages are
202 difficult to separate (e.g., prosodically similar languages such as Spanish and Catalan) (Bosch &
203 Sebastin-Galls, 2003; Sebastin-Galls & Bosch, 2009). However, in cases that the languages
204 are easier to separate, the timecourse of speech perception development for both languages
205 appears to be somewhat similar for bilinguals and monolinguals (Sundara, et al., 2008).
206 However, these studies have used behavioral measures to address these questions.
207 Electrophysiological measures from our previous analyses suggested that bilingual exposure
208 leads to differences in speech processing, even for two languages that should be relatively easy
209 to separate, such as English and Spanish (Shafer, et al., 2011; 2012). One study also indicated a
210 large effect of language experience on electrophysiological measures to words in the dominant
211 and non-dominant languages of Spanish-English toddlers (e.g., Conboy & Mills, 2006).
212 A second goal of the current paper is to determine whether relative amount of experience
213 with Spanish and English in the bilingual child influences the MMRs. In previous studies, infants
214 were classified as having monolingual or bilingual exposure, without considering graded amount
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231 of input. In the current study, we examine to what extent amount of experience with Spanish
232 versus English in bilingual environments influences infant responses.
233
234 The Present Study
235 The present study examines ERP timelocked to the English vowels [] and [I] in a
236 modified oddball paradigm in monolingually-exposed and bilingually-exposed infants and
237 children between three and 47 months of age.
238 Two alternative hypotheses are examined to predict the pattern of MMR changes. One Yu, Yan 6/9/2015 11:56 PM
239 possibility is that even a minimal amount of experience with a second language will affect how a 275
276
Deleted: Our previous study revealed differences in
the trajectory of development between monolinguals
240 developing child processes speech in a more categorical fashion. In this case, age-matched 277 and bilinguals, particularly for female infants.
241 bilingually-exposed toddlers, regardless of the relative amount of English experience, will be
242 more similar to each other than to monolingually-exposed toddlers. That is, within the bilingual
243 children, the relative amount of experience with a language will affect processing of speech in a
244 nonlinear manner. For both monolingual and bilingual children, biological factors such as age
245 and sex will influence the neural responses to speech. The alternative hypothesis is that amount
246 of experience with a language will affect processing of speech in a graded fashion. In this case,
247 amount of input in English will show a more linear relationship with MMR indices of
248 discrimination of English vowel contrasts. We also hypothesized that maturational level
249 (measured via age and sex) will modulate the pattern of response, based on our previous findings
250 (e.g., Shafer, et al., 2011).
251
252 Materials and Methods
253 The experiment reported here was approved by The Graduate Center, CUNY Internal
254 Review Board.
255
256 Participants
257 Fifty-nine bilingual children and 59 monolingual children were recruited. Ten children
258 from the bilingual group were not included in this study for the following reasons: five refused to
259 be tested (no data), two had too few trials, two had corrupt data, and one had missing data files.
260 Of the remaining 49 bilingually-exposed children, 30 were male, and 19 were female. Seventy-
261 eight data sessions were collected with 16 (nine males, seven females) of these bilingually-
262 exposed children being tested two to five times at different ages in a longitudinal design. Ten
263 children from the monolingual group were not included for the following reasons: three were
264 tested in a different paradigm, three refused to be tested, two showed indications of language
265 impairment, and two had missing or corrupt data files. Of the remaining 49 monolingual
266 children, 26 were male and 23 were female. Ninety data sessions were collected with 20 (10
267 males, 10 females) of the monolingually-exposed children being tested two- to six times at
268 different ages in a longitudinal design. That is, a total of 168 data sets were collected from 98
269 children (Bilingual: 47 males and 31 females sessions; Monolingual: 48 males and 42 female
270 sessions). Table 1 presents a summary of the ERP session amount in terms of participant age, sex
271 and language for the cross-sectional and longitudinal data. There is no session amount difference
272 in terms of the language or sex factor (Chi Square test: X2 = 0.558, p = 0.46). Compared to
273 Shafer et al. (2011), eleven more bilingual sessions and seventeen more monolingual sessions
274 were included in this paper.
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278 Language input was estimated from a questionnaire filled out by the principal caretaker,
279 using a seven-point scale for rating input across multiple persons (e.g., father, mother, babysitter,
280 siblings) and situations (e.g., home, playground), with 3 indicating all Spanish (labeled on the
281 questionnaire as Spanish all the time), -3 indicating all English (labeled on the questionnaire as
282 English all the time), and 0 indicating equal Spanish and English input (labeled on the
283 questionnaire as equal English and Spanish). (Note that on the questionnaire the values 1 to 7
284 were used and were then transformed to a scale of -3 to 3 for ease of interpretation). None of the
285 bilingual children had a language background score of 3 (meaning all Spanish exposure), or -3
286 (meaning all English exposure). In the main statistical analyses, we used the scores from the
287 language background questionnaires (LBQs) as a continuous variable. Twenty eight out of 49
288 children have a relatively balanced English-Spanish exposure with an LBQ score within the
289 range of -1 and 1.The only place that we divided the bilingual children into two subgroups based
290 upon the scores from their LBQs is where we described these childrens language profiles, as
291 shown in Table 2. A total of 20 (female = 8) children were in the Spanish-dominant subgroup
292 with a LBQ score of 0 to 2.9, and the remainder (N=29, female = 11) were English-dominant
293 with a LBQ score between -0.1 and -2.9. The overall average score for all the bilingual children
294 was -0.62 (SD = 1.3), while the Spanish-dominant subgroup mean was 0.62 (SD= 0.80), and the
295 subgroup mean for the English-dominant children was -1.47 (SD = 0.76). Language measures Yu, Yan 6/10/2015 10:08 AM
were obtained using the Preschool Language Scale-4 (PLS-4) in English and, for bilinguals, in 324
Deleted: The Welch Two Sample t-test comparing
296 325 the LBQ scores from the English-dominant with that
297 both English and Spanish. Three-year-old children also received the English Peabody Picture 326 of the Spanish-dominant subgroups revealed that the
327 two subgroups differ significantly (t(39.7) = 9.179, p
298 Vocabulary Test-3 (PPVT-3) (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) and for bilinguals, the Spanish Test de 328 < 0.0001).
299 Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody (TVIP) (Dunn and Dunn, 1986). Table 2 shows standard
300 language scores on the PLS-4 (Zimmerman et al., 2002) by language group (monolingual and
301 bilingual, Spanish dominant versus English dominant bilinguals). Note that for children under 12
302 months of age, the test items on the PLS-4 reflect general communication development (until
303 first words are reported), and thus the scores at this age are not expected to be sensitive to
304 relative amounts of English versus Spanish experience. We have English language measures
305 from all the children, 15.5 sets of Spanish measures from the 20 Spanish-dominant children, and
306 19 sets of scores out of the 29 English-dominant bilingual children. The missing scores are due
307 to incomplete testing, and all but three and half sets of scores are from children under 9 months
308 of age. The monolingual and two bilingual groups of children did not significantly differ on the
309 English language tests for any pairwise comparison between monolinguals and bilinguals in the
310 longitudinal and cross-sectional groups, or between English- versus Spanish-dominant groups (t-
311 test, p >0.20). The only differences were between English-dominant versus Spanish-dominant
312 groups on the Spanish Language tests. Not surprisingly, bilingually-exposed children with
313 relatively greater exposure to Spanish (0 to 2.9 on the LBQ) showed significantly higher
314 receptive Spanish language standard scores than those with less Spanish exposure (-0.1 to 2.9;
315 p = 0.05 for receptive language, and p = 0.11 for expressive language). The Bayley Scales of
316 Infant and Toddler Development (Bayley, 1993) were used as a measure of general cognitive
317 development. A t-test showed no group differences (monolingual mean = 103, SD = 15;
318 bilingual mean = 98, SD = 17, p = 0.14). All infants were full-term, and had a normal birth
319 history with no history of cognitive, neurological, speech-language, or hearing deficits in
320 immediate family members. All had passed a newborn hearing screening according to parental
321 report, and most passed a Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions (TOAE) hearing screening in
322 the lab. All infants in the analyses showed a clearly defined P1 peak at frontocentral sites. Socio-
323 economic status (SES) information was collected for all children and most of the children came
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329 from families with a middle-class or above SES, but the monolingual group had higher SES than
330 the bilingual group (Monolingual: mean = 50.7, SD = 12.1; Bilingual: mean = 39.5, SD = 16.9, p
331 < 0.001) (Hollingshead, 1975).
332
333 Stimuli
334 Two, 250-ms re-synthesized vowels [], as in bet and [I] as in bit that differed in F1
335 and F2 formant frequencies (F1, 650 Hz and 500 Hz, F2: 1980 Hz and 2160 Hz, respectively)
336 were used. These stimuli were from a continuum of nine stimuli (deviant [I]: step 3, standard []:
337 step 9 of the continuum) used in a previous study with eight- to ten-year old children with and
338 without language impairment (Shafer, et al., 2005; Shafer, et al., 2007; Datta, et al., 2010).
339 Previous studies in our lab using all nine stimuli (step 1 to 9) showed that the categorical
340 perception crossover point was at step 6 for both adults and children; thus, step 3 and step 9 were
341 equal step distance from the crossover point. Moreover, step 3 was consistently identified as [I],
342 and step 9 as [] by both adults and children as reported in our previous studies (Shafer, et al.,
343 2007; Datta et al., 2010). In addition, other studies indicated poor categorization and neural
344 responses MMN to these vowels by late adult learners of English with Spanish as a first language
345 (Hisagi et al., 2014), and poor categorization to these vowels in children with specific language
346 impairment (e.g., Datta, et al., 2010). The stimuli were presented at 86.5 dB SPL free-field over
347 two speakers, located 1 m in front of and 1 m slightly above and behind the child's head.
348
349 Electrophysiological Design and Procedures
350 The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from a 63-site Geodesic net using Net
351 Station amplifiers and Net Station 4.1 software at a 250 Hz sampling rate and 0.1 to 30 Hz
352 bandpass. The EEG was timelocked to the onset of the vowel stimuli. The stimuli were delivered
353 (via Eprime software) in sequences of 10 stimuli with an ISI of 400 ms between stimuli in the
354 sequence, and 1500 ms between each sequence of 10. Three train types were randomly
355 presented. The deviant stimulus occurred in the 4th and 8th position for 100 trains, in
356 the 5th and 10th position for 50 trains, and in the 6th and 10th position for 50 trains, for a total of
357 1600 standards (80%) and 400 deviants (20%).
358 The procedures were explained to the caretakers who then read and signed informed
359 consent. The electrode net was soaked in a saline solution and excess solution was then removed.
360 The nets were placed on the participants scalp while the participant was entertained by a lab
361 assistant. The impedances of electrodes were maintained at or below 50 ohms, which is sufficient
362 for high input impedance amplifiers (200 Megaohms). During the experiment, older children sat
363 in a chair and infants sat on the caretakers lap watching a video (e.g., Elmo, Baby Einstein) with
364 the sound muted. In some sessions or portions of sessions, children were entertained by a
365 researcher blowing bubbles or showing silent toys, if they became bored with the video (defined
366 as looking around the room). Caretakers wore headphones playing music so that they would not
367 orient to the vowel changes. Up to 200 sequences of ten stimuli were delivered (1600 standards,
368 400 deviants) in an approximately 40-minute session (28 minutes of stimulus delivery plus
369 preparation time). Sessions were ended if a child became fussy.
370 The continuous EEG was segmented with a pre-stimulus duration of 200 ms and 800 ms
371 post-stimulus onset and baseline corrected using the pre-stimulus 100 ms amplitude. Any epochs
372 with electrical activity exceeding +/- 140 V at any electrode site were rejected, and bad
373 channels (on 20% of trials) were replaced by spine interpolation. Over 90% of the children had
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374 more than 100 trials for the deviant stimulus after artifact rejection. The mean number of trials
375 for the standard and deviant ERPs after artifact reject did not differ significantly between the
376 monolingual and bilingual groups although there is a trend of fewer trials obtained for the
377 bilingual groups (ps > .07, Standards: Monolingual Mean =601, SD= 217, Bilingual Mean = 540,
378 SD = 224; Deviants: Monolingual Mean = 241, SD = 88, Bilingual Mean = 216, SD = 91).
379 Epochs (-200 to 800 ms) were averaged for type (standard, deviant) for the current analysis.
380
381 Analysis
382 ERP data reduction
383 The first step in the analysis was to reduce the ERP data using an objective metric. We Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 10:55 AM
384 built the left hemisphere model and the right hemisphere model based on the findings from two 419 Deleted: Data
385 earlier studies in our laboratory (Shafer et al., 2011, 2012). In Shafer and colleagues (2011), left
386 frontal site 9 showed significant positive MMRs for monolingual infants. Adjacent sites 4, 5, 13
387 and 16 were correlated highly (> +/- .6) with site 9 for all but the 3-month-old infants for both
388 intervals. These sites were selected and averaged to create a left superior hemisphere model. We
389 also created a left inferior posterior model from left inferior sites 26, 27 and 31. These sites were
390 highly correlated (r > = 0.6) with each other and served to represent inversions of the mismatch
391 responses, which is expected to be largest near the left mastoid (site 26). These inferior sites
392 showed a strong negative correlation with site 9 (r < -.6). Then, the inferior average was
393 subtracted from the superior average to create the left hemisphere model. A right hemisphere
394 model was created in a similar fashion. In four- to seven-year-old children, the MMN was
395 largest at site 54 to the vowel contrast used in this study (Shafer, et al., 2010). Sites that
396 correlated highly (> +/- .6) with site 54 were included to create the right hemisphere model.
397 Right superior frontocentral sites 54, 55, 57, 58, 61 and 63 were averaged to create the right
398 superior model and posterior inferior sites 36, 37, 39, 40 and 45 were averaged to create the right
399 inferior model. Then the inferior model was subtracted from the superior model. This method of
400 data reduction reduces independent noise measures at each electrode for participants, and thus,
401 increases signal/noise ratio (Parra, et al., 2004). The intervals 200-280 and 280-360 ms were
402 selected for analysis because these were centered around the positive MMR (Shafer et al., 2011)
403 and reflect the time interval where MMN emerges in four year old children. A later time interval
404 between 520 and 600 ms was also selected because our previous analysis suggested that
405 negativity would first emerge in this late interval in infants and toddlers (Shafer et al., 2012). We
406 also tested the time window from 440-520 ms, but the pattern of results was highly similar to the
407 late interval, and thus, was not included in this report. These methods of data reduction limit the
408 possibility of spurious findings that are the result of multiple tests run for each electrode channel
409 and each time point.
410
411 t-test on cross-sectional data to determine the presence of MMRs
412 In a first step, Welch Paired Sample (two-tailed) t-tests were calculated for monolingual
413 and bilingual language groups and time intervals to determine the presence of significant MMRs.
414 Only the 98 sets of cross-sectional data were used since the longitudinal data does not meet the
415 assumption of independent observation for t-test. Note that our previous paper showed a
416 significant positive MMR from approximately 200 to 360 ms in monolingual children (Shafer, et
417 al., 2011), and significant negativity in six-month-olds from 560-600 ms (Shafer, et al., 2012).
418 Thus, these t-tests were expected to replicate the previous findings.
11
420 Mixed-effects modeling on longitudinal and cross-sectional data
421 Table 1 shows the distribution of the data sessions. The longitudinal data included 106
422 sessions from 36 children and the cross-sectional data included 98 sets from 98 children. These
423 were analyzed separately using mixed-effects modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002; Singer &
424 Willett, 2003). The first data sessions (36 cases) from the longitudinal children were also
425 included in the cross-sectional data to increase statistical power. Later longitudinal sessions (i.e.,
426 the second session, third session, etc.) were excluded from these cross-sectional analyses.
427 Step 1. Based on the results from the t-tests and our earlier studies, two, 80-ms time
428 intervals between 200 and 360 ms were computed, centered around the positive MMR (Shafer, et
429 al., 2011) and one 80-ms time interval was computed between 520-600 ms, reflecting the
430 negative MMR observed in the analysis of six-month-old infants in Shafer et al. (2012).
431 Step 2. Exploratory examination of the data indicated a nonlinear relationship between
432 amplitude and age: the trajectory showed a brief steep slope followed by a longer steady, flat
433 phase difficult to model using polynomial terms (e.g., quadratic or cubic terms). Therefore we
434 decided to adopt a piecewise approach (piecewise mixed-effects modeling) that allowed us to
435 separate the growth trajectory into two meaningful linear components (Raudenbush & Bryk,
436 2002). The breakpoint at which the slope changes was identified using a data driven approach,
437 that is, we selected the breakpoint that minimized the deviance of the fitted models. We then
438 created two age variables as indicators of the effect of age before and after the breakpoint
439 (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002).
440 Step 3. Mixed-Effects Modeling. The effects of age (two age variables: pre- and post-
441 breakpoint), hemisphere, sex, and language exposure were then tested following a bottom-up
442 theory-guided approach, starting with level one predictors, then progressively adding to the
443 models subject level independent variables and interaction terms. The likelihood ratio (LR) test
444 and the Akaike information criterion (AIC) were used to compare the fit of the competing
445 models. Only variables and interactions that improved the model fit were retained.
446 All models included maximal random effects structure (Barr, et al., 2013), that is, random
447 intercept for subject and random slopes for the within subject independent variables were
448 included. Random slopes were excluded only in those cases in which maximal models failed to
449 converge. Within- and between-subject outliers were trimmed following a 2-stage procedure:
450 first, we excluded values more than 3 SD below or above the mean; second, level one and level
451 two standardized residuals were examined and we re-fitted the models without observations with
452 residual values more than 3 SD below or above the mean. In none of the analyses was more than
453 3% of the data excluded.
454 Data were analyzed with R version 3.1.1 (R Core Team, 2014) using the lmer function
455 from the lme4 package, version 1.1-7 (Bates, et al., 2014).
456 Results
457
458 Presence of positive versus negative MMR
12
459 Figure 1 and Figure 2 display the grand average responses at the clusters of left and right
460 superior sites for the standard and deviant conditions for cross-sectional and longitudinal data,
461 respectively. Each language group was divided into five subgroups according to age. In general,
462 in the early time window (200-360 ms), MMR amplitudes shift from positivity in the infants and
463 toddlers to reduced positivity or negativity in the older children for both cross-sectional and
464 longitudinal groups. Figure 3 and Figure 4 present the scatterplots of MMR peak amplitudes
465 from each individual.
466 t-tests on the 98 cross-sectional datasets were used to examine the presence of significant
467 MMRs (Table 3). In the time window of 200-280 ms, all children showed the significant positive
468 MMR at the left site, but only the bilingual group showed a significant positive MMR at the right
469 site (two-tailed, ps < 0.05). For the monolinguals alone, significant positive MMRs were
470 observed from 200-360 ms for the left model (p < .0001). For the bilingual children, the deviant
471 showed a tendency to be more positive than the standard between 280-360 ms for both the left
472 and right models (p = 0.08 for both models). In addition, a marginally significant negative MMR
473 was found for the right model from 520-600 ms in the monolinguals only (p = 0.06) (Table 3).
474
475 Mixed-effects modeling for cross-sectional and longitudinal data
476 Tables 4 and 5 summarize the results from mixed-effects modeling for both the
477 longitudinal and cross-sectional data across two early time window (200-280 ms, 280-360 ms)
478 and one later time window (520-600 ms) where significant MMRs were observed.
479
480 Cross-sectional data
481 Between 200-280 ms, for the cross-sectional data, the breakpoint was identified at 9.5
482 months. The best fitting model included age, hemisphere, sex, and the age sex interaction
483 (Table 4). The effect of age and its interaction with sex indicated that, before the breakpoint, the
484 mismatch response amplitude decreased with age, but only in the male group. After 9.5 months,
485 age did not have any effect on amplitude in males or in females (Figure 3). The significant effect
486 of hemisphere indicated that the right hemisphere was more negative than the left hemisphere.
487 The effect of language exposure was not statistically significant (2(1) = 0.103, p = .749).
488 Between 280-360 ms, for the cross-sectional data, the age breakpoint was 8.5 months,
489 and the best model revealed a significant effect of the age, hemisphere, sex, and an age sex
490 interaction (Table 4). The trend was similar to that identified in the previous time range. The
491 effect of age and the interaction of age by sex indicated a decrease in amplitude for males in the
492 3-8.5 months age range and flat slope after 8.5 months and for females (Figure 3). The right
493 hemisphere resulted to be significantly more negative than the left hemisphere. The effect of
494 language exposure was not statistically significant (2(1) = 0.098, p = .754).
495 Between 520 and 600 ms, the age breakpoint value for the cross-sectional data was 13.25
496 months, and the best fitting model included hemisphere and sex. Female children and the right
497 hemisphere measure had significantly less positive amplitude than males and the left hemisphere
498 measure, respectively. The effects of age (2(2) = 4.7, p = .095), and language exposure (2(1) =
499 1.715, p = .19) were not statistically significant.
500
13
501 Longitudinal data

502 In the early time window 200-280 ms, the breakpoint was identified at 19.5 months of
503 age. The final mixed-effects model that best fit the data included age and sex (Table 5). Age had
504 a significant negative effect only before the breakpoint, indicating that the MMR amplitude
505 decreased from three months to 19.5 months of age; this was followed by a phase (19.5-48
506 months) with no effect of age on amplitude (Figure 4). The effect of sex indicated an overall
507 more negative amplitude in females as compared to males (male: mean = 1.58, SD = 1.73;
508 female: mean = 0.10, SD = 2.65, t(54.5) = -2.825, p < 0.01). The effects of hemisphere and
509 language exposure were not statistically significant (2(1) = 0.445, p = .505 and 2(1) = 0.004, p
510 = .949, respectively).
511 For the time window 280-360 ms, the breakpoint for the longitudinal data was 13.25
512 months of age. The final mixed-effects model that best fit the data included only the effect of
513 age, with a trend similar to that in the earlier time frame (Table 5): a significant decrease of
514 amplitude before the breakpoint followed by a flat phase (Figure 4). The effect of sex,
515 hemisphere, and language exposure were not statistically significant (2(1) = 0.436, p = .509,
516 2(1) = 2.934, p = .087, and 2(1) = 0.338, p = .561, respectively).
517 In the later time window 520-600 ms, the age breakpoint for the longitudinal data was
518 12.25 months, and the best fit linear mixed-effects model revealed significant effects of age, sex,
519 and an age sex interaction (Table 5). The effects of age differ in males and females. Age
520 showed a significant effect only for males in the age range preceding the breakpoint (Figure 4).
521 The effects of hemisphere and language exposure were not statistically significant (2(1) = 0.379,
522 p = .538 and 2(1) = 2.03, p = .154, respectively).
523 In summary, t-tests on the cross sectional data suggested some language group
524 differences at both the early and late time windows. However, the mixed-effects modeling on
525 longitudinal and cross-sectional data did not confirm any language effect. Age has a significant
526 effect on the MMRs in the cross-sectional and longitudinal data for the two early time windows
527 (200-280 ms, 280-360 ms) for male children. In the cross-sectional data, no age effects were
528 observed in female children. Sex is also a significant factor affecting the MMR amplitude
529 between 200 and 280 ms for both longitudinal and cross-sectional young children, and between
530 280-360 ms for the cross-sectional young children. In addition, a hemispheric difference was
531 found only in the cross-sectional data, with the right hemisphere showing a more negative
532 response. Similarly, in the later time window (520-600 ms), age and sex had a significant effect
533 on the MMR amplitude for the younger children, but a hemispheric effect was only observed in
534 the cross-sectional data.
535
536 Discussion
537 This study examined to what extent the amount of input in English versus Spanish
538 modulated MMRs to English vowels in three-month to 47-month-old children. An additional
539 question was how maturational factors related to age and sex of the children affected the MMRs.
540 Our previous study had shown that in general, children showed a positive MMR, and the Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:06 AM
541 response was more positive for younger than older infants, and discriminative responses are Moved (insertion) [1]
542 maturing more rapidly for female than male infants. We have also shown differences in the Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:07 AM
543 developmental timecourse between monolingually-exposed English infants and bilingually- 545 Deleted: . However,
544 exposed Spanish-English infants. Bilingual females showed larger negativity in the MMR than Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:07 AM
546 Deleted: .
14
Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:04 AM

547 the monolingual children(Shafer, et al., 2010, 2011, 2012). The current analysis revealed two 593 Deleted: suggests
548 new findings: 1) the effect of Spanish-English bilingual experience on the brain discriminative Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:04 AM
549 response to an English vowel contrast is, at most, subtle; 2) the MMR became more negative at a 594 Deleted: that
550 rapid rate during the first year and then leveled off from the middle of the second year to four Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:06 AM
551 years of age. 601 Moved up [1]: children showed a positive MMR.
602 response was more positive for younger than older
552 603 infants.
553 Longitudinal versus cross-sectional results Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:04 AM
554 We collected 168 data sessions from 98 children. We applied linear mixed-effects 595 Deleted: . The results of the linear mixed-effects
596 modeling revealed that maturational factors, related
555 modeling to the longitudinal and cross-sectional data separately. The results from 98 cross- 597 to age and sex, affected the MMRs. In general,
556 sectional cases (including the first data set from the 36 longitudinal children), and 106 598 children showed a positive MMR. However, the
599 response was more positive for younger than older
557 longitudinal cases were somewhat similar. In general, the two analyses showed that age had the 600 infants.
558 largest effect during the first year of life. The major difference between the two sets of analyses Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:03 AM
559 is that the breakpoints for when the slope of the regression line changed was earlier for the cross- 604 Deleted: The
560 sectional than for the longitudinal data. The value of the longitudinal data set is that we have Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:20 AM
561 removed some individual variability, and thus, we have greater confidence that the change in 605 Deleted: approximately 14 months of age
562 slope occurs closer to the middle of the second year of life. The age breakpoints derived Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:38 PM
563 statistically indicate a different rate of amplitude changes in the MMR in infancy and early 606 Deleted: This pattern was stronger for the male
607 than the female infants because a number of the
564 toddlerhood compared to later childhood. Additional studies will be necessary to narrow down 608 younger females showed negative MMRs. In
565 the age at which the developmental rate change, represented by the breakpoint, occurs. 609 addition, a sex difference was found in the later time
610 interval (520-600 ms) for the longitudinal data set.
566 611 The MMR was more negative for females than
567 Development of Automaticity 612 males. These results, thus, suggest that
613 discriminative responses are maturing more rapidly
568 We have suggested that automaticity of speech perception is not present to the fine 614 for female than male infants.
569 phonetic contrast examined in the current study until around four years of age (Shafer, et al., Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:27 AM
570 2010; Shafer, et al., 2011). Specifically, children are not initially automatic at discriminating this Formatted: Font:Italic
571 contrast because it takes time and experience to establish robust, selective perceptual routines Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:23 AM
572 (SPRs) for native-language phonological categories. It is possible that larger acoustic-phonetic 676 Deleted: There was considerable variability in
677 whether a child showed greater positivity or
573 differences, for example between [i] and [], would allow for automaticity of discrimination 678 negativity of the deviant vowel until four years of
574 because these are sufficiently salient. Crick & Koch (1990) argue that highly salient distinctions 679 age. This variability may be linked to whether the
680 infants ignored or attended to the speech sounds.
575 can be processed (discriminated or identified) with fewer attentional resources than less salient 681 With increasing automaticity of discrimination,
576 information. However, they also point out that less salient information can be made more salient 682 attention will show less of an influence on the MMR
683 (see Hisagi, et al., 2010). By four years of age, over
577 through over-learning. The current findings suggest that over-learning of these subtle 684 80% of monolingual children show a negative MMR
578 differences is not achieved until after four years of age. 685 to this vowel contrast (Shafer, et al., 2010),
686 suggesting automaticity of processing. The
579 687 proportion of infants showing a negative response
580 Mismatch Negativity or Late Negativity? 688 increased at the later ages, which could indicate that
689 these children had automatized discrimination of the
581 We examined the difference between the standard and deviant in both early and late time 690 vowel contrast. An interesting question is how to
582 windows. It may be that the negativity in the later time window of 520-600 ms in monolinguals 691 interpret the presence of negativity in an individual
692 childs data if an age-group-level analysis does not
583 at the right sites is an immature version of the adult MMN or this late response may be 693 indicate significant negativity. In an analysis of the
584 equivalent to the LN. Few studies have reported on the LN (e.g., eponien, et al., 1998; Datta, 694 six-month old infants data, we found that,
695 irrespective of language input, infants generally
585 et al., 2010; Shafer, et al., 2005; Shestakova, et al., 2003). Given the variability of MMN 696 showed more negative responses to a deviant in the
586 latencies across developmental studies and the lack of information on the LN, it is currently 697 final compared to internal position of a sequence of
698 ten stimuli (eight standard vowels and two deviant
587 unclear whether the emerging late negativity from 520-600 ms reflects the processes underlying 699 vowels) (Shafer, et al., 2012). We also found that
588 MMN or LN. In addition, it is possible that both MMN and LN reflect the same underlying 700 infants showing evidence of differential processing
701 of standard stimuli in the final (10th) position, were
... [1]
589 processes (Datta, et al., 2010). In Shafer et al (2010), the MMN to the same vowel contrast was
Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:24 AM
590 observed between 300 and 400 ms in children between age 4 and 7 years old. If MMN latency 671 Deleted: An alternative to the negative MMR
591 does shift in a linear fashion, then it is quite possible that the negativity in the late time window 672 reflecting the process underlying the MMN is that it
592 in monolingual children at the right sites reflects the emergence of the real MMN, not LN. 673 indexes the same processes as the Nc response. Nc is
674 an increase in negativity to an attended deviant or
675 novel stimulus. Reynolds and Richards (2005) ... [2]
15
702 Clearly, developmental studies using a range of stimulus contrasts of varying difficulty (e.g., Lee
703 et al., 2012) are needed to further explore this question.
704
705 Amount of English versus Spanish Input
706 We had predicted that amount of language input would modulate development of
707 discrimination of this English vowel contrast. We hypothesized that greater input in English
708 would result in more robust brain discrimination of the vowel contrast. We did not find support
709 for the amount of English versus Spanish input influencing the MMR amplitude. Note that the
710 family SES for monolingual children was higher than that for bilingual groups. This might have
711 influenced the results given that children from lower SES has less language exposure than their
712 peers from higher SES families (Hart & Risley, 2003). In the current study, the SES differences
713 should have accentuated group differences, but we found no evidence of this. Research suggests
714 that children with lower SES background hear less language in general (Fernald, et al., 2013),
715 and an ERP study found an atypical auditory refractory period to auditory information in
716 children from a low SES group compared to higher SES group (Stevens, et al., 2014). But this
717 refractory period was related to N1 recovery. In the case of our data, we would expect that the
718 low SES group would show more positive responses, if there was less recovery for
719 refractoriness. Even though N1 is not apparent to the standard stimulus in infant paradigms using
720 relatively rapid presentation rates (Ponton, et al., 1998), the longer interstimulus interval between
721 deviant stimuli should allow for some N1 recovery, seen as an increase in negativity (Dehaene-
722 Lambertz & Dehaene, 1994). Future studies are needed to examine how factors associated with
723 SES (total amount of input) affect neural correlates of speech processing in early childhood.
724 In the present study, there is a negative correlation between age and the amount of
725 bilingual exposure. Pearson's product-moment correlation results (r = - 0.28, and p = 0.05 for the Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:28 AM
Formatted: Indent: First line: 0.5"
726 cross-sectional datasets, and r = -0.40, and p < 0.01 for the longitudinal datasets) suggest overall
727 less Spanish exposure in the older bilingual children. It is possible that reduced Spanish exposure
728 in the older children could contribute to lack of language effect. Note that more than half of the
729 bilingual children (28 out of 49 cross-sectional datasets, and 25 out of 44 longitudinal datasets)
730 have LBQ scores within the range of -1 and 1, which suggests a relatively balanced English-
731 Spanish exposure. Given that a small amount of language exposure can lead to neural and
732 behavioral response changes (Kuhl, et al., 2003; Mayer, et al., 2002), we do not think that lack of
733 strong language effect in the present study is due to the inadequate amount of Spanish exposure.
734 Instead, it may be due to a good amount of English exposure in majority of the bilingual
735 participants.
736 In a previous study, Kuhl and colleagues (2008) showed a negative correlation between
737 the amplitude of the MMR in infancy and later language measures. Specifically, infants who
738 showed more negative responses were those who showed better language at later ages. They also
739 found that monolingual infants who showed positive MMRs to non-native speech contrasts, but
740 negative MMRs to speech contrasts from the ambient language showed better behavioral
741 language measures. If negative MMRs are an indication of more robust discrimination, then the
742 monolingual English-exposed infants in the current study should have shown the most negative
743 responses. However, it was female infants that showed the most negative MMRs, regardless of
744 language status. Our findings were more in line with the behavioral results of Sundara et al.,
745 (2008), who showed no differences between monolingual and bilingual infants. It is possible that
746 the MMR is not sufficiently sensitive in infants and young children to reflect subtle language
747 group differences. Or it may be that the amount of English that the children in the bilingual
16
748 group received was sufficient to lead to equivalent speech processing abilities to the English
749 monolingual group.
750 In addition, Spanish and English are prosodically quite different. These prosodic
751 differences probably aided the children in keeping the input from the two languages separate. In
752 contrast, prosodically similar languages such as Spanish and Catalan might result in a
753 significantly different pattern of neural responses, as suggested by the different behavioral
754 trajectory for Catalan monolingual and Spanish-Catalan bilingual infants (Bosch & Sebastin-
755 Galls, 2003).
756
757 Maturational Factors
758 Our study showed that both age and sex are significant factors in the development of Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:54 AM
759 speech perception during infancy and early toddlerhood. Both of these factors may reflect brain 794 Deleted: Variability of the MMR ... [3]
760 maturation. Studies of brain maturation indicate that cortical auditory regions are highly
761 immature in the newborn infant (Moore & Linthicum, 2007). Moore and Linthicum (2007) point
762 out that intense sounds with large spectral differences are necessary to drive neural firing for
763 encoding and discrimination at this young age. By six months of age, neural assemblies that
764 receive auditory input have matured sufficiently to allow for encoding and discrimination of
765 finer stimulus differences (Shafer, et al., 2014). The difference in breakpoint for the earlier and
766 later time intervals may reflect different maturational rates for early (obligatory) versus late
767 (endogenous) processes.
768 Our data revealed that up until four months of age the majority of infants showed a large
769 positive MMR to the stimulus difference. In particular, none of the male infants under 125 days
770 (approximately four months of age) showed negative MMRs to the vowel difference. The
771 presence of a positive MMR indicates that auditory cortex is sufficiently mature to resolve the
772 spectral difference between vowels. However, we suggest that this pattern does not indicate
773 perceptual awareness of the difference. Future studies will need to examine how behavioral
774 correlates of perception relate to the MMR. Our data also showed that the amplitude of MMR
775 changes in a nonlinear fashion, with the most rapid changes during the first 14 months of age.
776 Sex difference was found in both the earlier (200-280 ms) and later (520-600 ms) time
777 interval. The amplitude of the MMR reduced faster in the early time window for the male than
778 the female infants because a number of the younger females showed negative MMRs. In the later
779 time interval (520-600 ms) for the longitudinal data set, the MMR was more negative for females
780 than males. These results, thus, suggest that discriminative responses are maturing more rapidly
781 for female than male infants.The sex difference found in the infants could be related to faster
782 maturation of speech perception systems in females. Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:45 PM
796 Deleted:
783 Studies have also revealed differences in brain maturation of the left and right
Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:33 PM
784 hemispheres between male and female infants. It is possible that males attend more to visual
797 Deleted: or of attentional systems
785 information and females attend more to auditory information. Studies have shown that the left
Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:45 PM
786 hemisphere is more engaged in processing verbal information (stories) and the right hemisphere Formatted: Indent: First line: 0.5"
787 in non-verbal information (music) using a tone-probe method (Shucard et al., 1977). More rapid
788 maturation of the left hemisphere is observed in three-month-old females and of the right
789 hemisphere for three-month-old males (Shucard et al., 1981; Shafer, et al., 1999). By six-months
790 of age, female infants showed a pattern of processing asymmetry similar to adults, with greater
791 attenuation of the response to probes over the left for language and over the right hemisphere for
792 music (Shucard, & Shucard, 1990). Male infants continued to show only right hemisphere
793 changes to the tone probes until nine months of age. The study by Friederici et al (2008) reported
17
798 an interaction of sex, hemisphere and testosterone level in speech processing. In infants with low
799 testosterone levels, girls showed more bilateral discriminative responses while male infants
800 showed more left lateralized response. Male infants with high level of testosterone hormone did
801 not show discriminative brain responses to a speech contrast. Thus, the sex differences observed
802 in the current study may indicate qualitative as well as quantitative differences in brain
803 maturation.
804 Our findings demonstrated effects of maturation and sex, but did not show an effect of
805 language input on MMRs. This is at odds with the findings of Conboy and Mills (2006). Their
806 study showed a relationship between the pattern of brain responses and vocabulary size and
807 language dominance, rather than age. It is possible that the use of words rather than isolated
808 vowels could account for the difference. In addition, it is possible that their participants had less
809 input in English (and more in Spanish). In addition, they did not look for sex differences, and it
810 is possible that a higher proportion of children with the smaller vocabularies were the male
811 infants. In other words, it is possible that the infants with smaller vocabularies were those with
812 slower brain maturation.
813
814 Limitations and future directions
815 Maturational factors (age, sex) had a small, but significant effect on the MMR
816 amplitudes. Bilingual experience showed little influence. To date, most auditory ERP studies in
817 infants have not attempted to control for attention. Studies by Richards and colleagues (2001) Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:52 PM
844 Deleted: We have proposed that attention is the
818 have demonstrated a number of techniques for measuring visual attention, but measuring 845 missing factor in this study that could explain a large
819 auditory attention in non-verbal populations is more challenging. In fact, auditory attention is 846 amount of variance, but we have no direct evidence
820 often inferred from visual tasks. In the recent study by Garrido-Nag, a visual reward was given to847 from our study.
821 encourage attention to the auditory stimulus (Garrido-Nag, 2012). In this study, 6-8 month old
822 infants who received the visual reward following a deviant stimulus showed a more negative
823 MMR. It will be important in future studies to use techniques such as this that allow assessment
824 or control of auditory attention. Future studies should also investigate the effect of language
825 experience in bilingual children learning languages that show greater phonological similarity,
826 such as Spanish and Catalan. It will also be important to more closely examine the effect of
827 amount of input in the two languages of a bilingual in modulating the MMR.
828
829 Conclusions Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 12:51 PM
830 Speech processing is still immature in children under four years of age. Immaturity was 848 Deleted:
831 indexed by a positive MMR to the English [] versus [I] speech contrast. Increased maturity was
832 indexed by increased negativity of the MMR, and the most rapid change in the MMR occurred
833 during the first year. This increased maturity in speech processing, in part, may reflect increasing
834 automaticity of discriminating the target contrast. Female infants showed somewhat more mature
835 neural discrimination, seen as more negative MMRs. We did not find significant differences in
836 the MMR related to monolingual versus bilingual experience with English. Future studies will be
837 needed to further explore how language-specific experience, using other language pairs,
838 influences the development of neural measures of speech processing.
839
840 Acknowledgments
841 This research was supported by NIH HD46193 to V. L. Shafer. We would like to thank A.
842 Barias and M. Wroblewski for helping collect and analyze data, B. Tagliaferri for technical
843 support and W. Strange and R. G. Schwartz for advice on the design.
18
849
850 References
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1034
22
1039
23
1040 Figure Captions

1041 Figure 1. The cross-sectional data. Waveforms at the frontal sites from the cross-sectional
1042 children between 3 and 47 months of age. The two left columns are from the monolingual
1043 children, and the two right columns are from the bilingual children. The standard [], deviant [I]
1044 and subtraction waveforms ([I] minus []) were generated using the average of five left frontal
1045 sites (site 4, 5, 9, 13 and 16 from the EGI 64 channel nets) and the average of six right frontal
1046 sites (site 5, 8, 54, 55, 57, 61 and 63 from the EGI 64 channel nets) for the two hemispheres,
1047 respectively. The time windows of analysis are marked with dotted boxes (200-360 ms, 520-600
1048 ms).
1049 Figure 2. The longitudinal data. Waveforms at the frontal sites from the longitudinal children
1050 between 3 and 47 months of age. The two left columns are from the monolingual children, and
1051 the two right columns are from the bilingual children. The standard [], deviant [I] and
1052 subtraction waveforms ([I] minus []) were generated using the average of five left frontal sites
1053 (site 4, 5, 9, 13 and 16 from the EGI 64 channel nets) and the average of six right frontal sites
1054 (site 5, 8, 54, 55, 57, 61 and 63 from the EGI 64 channel nets) for the two hemispheres,
1055 respectively. The time windows of analysis are marked with dotted boxes (200-360 ms, 520-600
1056 ms).
1057 Figure 3. Scatterplot of MMR amplitudes for the cross-sectional children across three time
1058 windows.
1059 Figure 4. Scatterplot of MMR amplitudes for the longitudinal children across three time
1060 windows.
1061
1062 Appendix Figure 1. Scatterplot of language background scores for the cross-sectional children
1063 across age. 3 means all Spanish, and -3 means all English exposure.
1064
1065 Appendix Figure 2. Scatterplot of language background scores for the longitudinal children
1066 across age. 3 means all Spanish, and -3 means all English exposure.
1067
24
1068 Table 1. Cross-sectional and longitudinal sessions by age (in month) and sex (M = male, F =
1069 female). A total of 98 children, each tested once from the cross-sectional group. 20 monolingual
1070 and 16 bilingual children were tested two to six times between three and 47 months of age. The
1071 first session from these 36 longitudinal children were also included in the cross-sectional data
1072 pool for statistical analysis to increase the statistical power.
1073
Age (months) 3-5 6-7 8-16 17-29 30-47 Total
Cross-sectional
Monolingual 3M,7F 6M,7F 8M,3F 3M,4F 6M,2F 26M,23F
Bilingual 9M,1F 9M,8F 4M,4F 5M,3F 3M,3F 30M,19F
Longitudinal
Monolingual 3M,4F 5M,7F 9M,6F 10M,10F 5M,3F 32M,30F
Bilingual 4M, 0F 5M,4F 5M,5F 9M,6F 4M,2F 27M,17F
1074
1075
25
1076 Table 2. Mean (SD) language scores for monolinguals and bilinguals in the Cross-
1077 sectional and Longitudinal subgroups. Subgroups of bilinguals were included. PLS-A =
1078 Auditory Comprehension and PLSE = Expressive skills. English Lang-all is the mean
1079 of the PLS-4 scores and the PPVT-3 (for older children). Bilingual-English (Bil-Eng)
1080 children had mean exposure scores on the LBQ between -0.1 and -2.9, whereas
1081 Bilingual-Spanish (Bil-Span) children had scores between 0 and 2.9.
1082
English English English Spanish Spanish
Group Lang-all PLS_A PLS_E PLS_A PLS_E
Cross-sectional
Monolingual 100(12) 98(16) 100(12) NA NA
Bilingual total 100(14) 100(16) 102(14) 101(20) 96(15)
Bil-Eng 102(14) 101(17) 104(14) 96(21) 95(16)
Bil-Span 104(9) 103(10) 99(15) 108(13) 103(10)
Longitudinal
Monolingual 102(13) 104(15) 103(14) NA NA
Bilingual total 100(13) 98(18) 102(14) 102(14) 104(13)
Bil-Eng 98(15) 98(19) 101(15) 89(20) 94(15)
Bil-Span 101(13) 97(18) 103(13) 105(11) 106(12)
1083
1084
26
1085 Table 3. Amplitudes (= Ampli), standard deviations ( = SD) and results from Welch Two
1086 Sample t-test (two-tailed) on the two earlier time intervals and one later time interval for all 98
1087 participants in the cross-sectional study. Separate results from the 49 children in the
1088 monolingual English (= Mono) and 49 children in the bilingual Spanish-English (= Biling) are
1089 also included.
1090
Left Right
200-280 280-360 520-600 200-280 280-360 520-600
All Ampli 1.66 1.48 0.88 0.77 0.43 -0.30
df = 97 SD 3.62 4.10 5.14 3.46 4.15 4.75
P <0.001 <0.001 0.09 0.03 0.30 0.53
T (4.533) (3.573) (1.70) (2.194) (1.021) (-0.627)
Mono Ampli 1.70 1.80 0.80 0.31 -0.21 -1.30
df = 48 SD 3.14 3.62 5.04 3.46 4.00 4.73
P <0.001 0.001 0.27 0.53 0.72 0.06
T (3.786) (3.486) (1.10) (0.624) (-0.366) (-1.926)
Biling Ampli 1.62 1.16 0.96 1.22 1.07 0.70
df = 48 SD 4.07 4.54 5.27 3.42 4.24 4.61
P <0.01 0.08 0.20 0.01 0.08 0.29
T (2.777) (1.783) (1.275) (2.502) (1.760) (1.065)
1091
1092
27
1093 Table 4. Summary of linear mixed-effects final models for the cross-sectional data across three
1094 time ranges (200-280 ms, 280-360 ms, and 520-600 ms).
1095
Fixed effects Estimate(SE) df t P
Time range = 200-280 ms; Breakpoint = 9.5 months
(Intercept) 0.662(0.793) 105.5 0.835 .406
age1 -0.727(0.218) 98 -3.333 .001*
age2 0.038(0.043) 98 0.896 .373
Hemi -0.891(0.305) 98 -2.921 .004*
Female -0.547(1.193) 98 -0.458 .648
age1female 0.693(0.33) 98 2.1 .038*
age2female 0.03(0.068) 98 0.445 .657
Random effects Variance Std.Dev.
Subj (Intercept) 5.749 2.398
Residual 4.558 2.135
(Intercept) 0.44(0.848) 105.7 0.519 .605
age1 -1.079(0.297) 98 -3.628 <.001*
age2 0.001(0.047) 98 0.21 .834
Hemi -1.051(0.33) 98 -3.189 .002*
Female -0.236(1.32) 98 -0.179 .858
age1female 1.051(0.465) 98 2.261 .026*
age2female 0.046(0.076) 98 0.607 .545
Subj (Intercept) 8.782 2.963
Residual 5.32 2.306
Time range = 520-600 ms; Breakpoint = 13.25 months (n.s.)
(Intercept) 1.718(0.61) 134 2.818 .006
Hemi -1.182(0.488) 98 -2.422 .017*
Female -1.955(0.854) 98 -2.29 .024*
Subject(Intercept) 11.66 3.415
1096
1097 Note. N = 98. age1 = effect of age before the breakpoint; age2 = effect of age after the
1098 breakpoint; female = effect of female; hemi = effect of right hemisphere.
1099
1100
28
1101 Table 5. Summary of linear mixed-effects final models for the longitudinal data across three
1102 time ranges (200-280 ms, 280-360 ms, and 520-600 ms).
1103
Fixed effects Estimate(SE) df t p
(Intercept) 0.746(0.578) 44.2 1.291 .204
age1 -0.135(0.049) 43.3 -2.723 .009*
age2 0.023(0.031) 181.5 0.74 .46
Female -1.536(0.663) 38.1 -2.317 .026*
Random effects Variance Std.Dev. Corr
Subject (Intercept) 4.735 2.176
age1 0.042 0.206 0.64
age2 0 0
(Intercept) 0.224(0.453) 50.2 0.494 .624
age1 -0.284(0.105) 32.9 -2.707 .011*
age2 0.008(0.032) 18.1 0.254 .803
Subject (Intercept) 2.918 1.708
age1 0.197 0.444 0.38
age2 0.008 0.089
(Intercept) -1.103(0.719) 49.6 -1.534 .131
age1 -0.617(0.175) 33.1 -3.515 .001*
age2 0.0065(0.064) 26.6 0.101 .921
Female 1.168(1.037) 44.9 1.127 .266
age1female 0.720(0.256) 30.5 2.815 .008*
age2female -0.145(0.099) 28.7 -1.469 .153
Subject(Intercept) 1.836 1.355
age1 0.191 0.437 0.58
age2 0.027 0.163
1104
1105 Note. N = 36. age1 = effect of age before the breakpoint; age2 = effect of age after the
1106 breakpoint; female = effect of female; hemi = effect of right hemisphere.
1107
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Neural Indices of vowel discrimination

10 Summary (< 100 words):

55 DESIGN: Electrophysiological Mismatch Responses (MMRs) were used as indices of vowel

420 Mixed-effects modeling on longitudinal and cross-sectional data

501 Longitudinal data

Yu, Yan 6/11/2015 11:04 AM

940 speaking preschoolers. Neuropsychologia, 50(14), 3228-3239.

1031 of non-native speech sounds. Can. J. Psychol., 37(2), 278-286.

1040 Figure Captions

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