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Abstract:
Newborns were trained to discriminate between speech sounds
while they were sleeping. The speech sound discrimination of the
infants was tested by analyzing mismatch negativity (MMN), an
attention independent electrophysiological brain response that is
elicited by infrequent changes in series of repetitive stimuli. The
brain responses of all subjects were recorded to phonemes /y/,
/y/i, and /i/. /y/ served as a standard stimulus and vowels /y/ and
/y/i as deviant stimuli. Subject group consisted of 10-, control
group of 9 newborns. For the subjects, the first MMN experiment was
conducted in the evening prior the training, the second one, the
next morning, after 2,5-4 hours of auditory discrimination
training. The last MMN experiment was conducted the next evening.
Control children were investigated twice, in the evening and the
next morning. They received no training. All children were either
in quiet- or active sleep during both the MMN experiments and the
training. The results demonstrated that the MMN amplitude increased
significantly for both deviants after the training. Moreover, the
MMN amplitude did not decrease significantly between the second and
the third experiment. No difference in the MMN amplitude was seen
in the control group between the first and the second experiment.
Thus, this study gives the first evidence that infants can learn
while sleeping.
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