Laboratory for Language Development
Laboratory Head
Reiko MAZUKA (Ph.D.)
We investigate how young infants become interested in speech that surround them, and learn to be the speaker of that language. In particular, we focus on the role of 'prosody' (i.e., intonation, rhythm and other suprasegmental characteristics of the speech) in language acquisition. We study how infants become attuned to the prosodic characteristics of their ambient language, and how acquiring it would affect other domains of language development.
- Acquisition of language specific phonology and prosody by Japanese infants
- Phonetic and prosodic characteristics of Japanese infant directed speech
- Contribution of linguistic information and cognitive development in children's language comprehension
- Role of sound-character relationship in learning how to read in Japanese
- Computational modeling of phonological acquisition
- October 10, 2010
- Study shows Japanese infants hear foreign words according to Japanese language rules by 14 months
- August 10, 2010
- Imaging study sheds light on neural origins of baby talk
- Mazuka, R., Cao, Y., Dupoux, E., and Christophe, A.:
"The development of phonological illusion: A cross-linguistic study with Japanese and French infants."
Developmental Science (in press) - Minagawa-Kawai, Y., van der Lely, H., Ramus, F., Sato, Y., Mazuka, R., and Dupoux, E.:
"Optical brain imaging reveals general auditory and language-specific processing in early infant development."
Cerebral Cortex, Vol.21, No.2, pp.611-621(2011) - Matsuda, Y-T., Ueno, K-I., Waggoner, A.,R., Erickson, D., Shimura, Y., Tanaka, K., Cheng, K., and Mazuka, R.:
"Processing of infant-directed speech by adults."
NeuroImage, Vol. 54, No.1, pp611-612(2010) - Yoshida, K., Iversen, J., Patel, A., Mazuka, R., Nito, H., Gervain, J., and Werker, J.:
"The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: a Japanese-English cross-linguistic study."
Cognition, Vol.115, No.2, pp356-361(2010) - Sato, Y., Sogabe, Y., and Mazuka, R.:
"Development of hemispheric specialization for lexical pitch-accent in Japanese infants."
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol.22, No.11, pp2503-2513 (2010) - Sato, Y., Sogabe, Y., and Mazuka, R.:
"Discrimination of phonemic vowel length by Japanese infants."
Developmental Psychology, Vol.46, No.1, pp106-119 (2010) - Mazuka, R., Jincho, N., and Oishi, H.:
"Development of executive control and language processing."
Language and Linguistics Compass Vol.3, No.1, pp59-89 (2009) - Gervain, J., Nespor, M., Horie, R., and Mehler, J.:
"Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: a Japanese-Italian cross-linguistic study"
Cognitive Psychology, Vol.57, No.1, pp56-74 (2008) - Mazuka, R, Kondo,T. and Hayashi, A.:
"Japanese mothers' use of specialized vocabulary in infant-directed speech: infant-directed vocabulary in Japanese."
Origin of Language, Chapter 4: pp39-58. Tokyo: Springer-Verlag (2008) - Imai, M. and Mazuka, R.:
"Language-relative construal of individuation constrained by universal ontology: revisiting language universals and linguistic relativity"
Cognitive Science, Vol. 31, pp385-413 (2007)