Developmental Science Cortical Tracking of Speech Across Rhythm Classes in English-, French-, and Japanese-Learning 4-and 8-Month-Old Infants

Varghese Peter; Marina Kalashnikova; Sandrien van Ommen; Reiko Mazuka; Denis Burnham; Thierry Nazzi

doi:10.1111/desc.70271

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Developmental Science Cortical Tracking of Speech Across Rhythm Classes in English-, French-, and Japanese-Learning 4-and 8-Month-Old Infants

Journal article

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Developmental Science Cortical Tracking of Speech Across Rhythm Classes in English-, French-, and Japanese-Learning 4-and 8-Month-Old Infants

Varghese Peter, Marina Kalashnikova, Sandrien van Ommen, Reiko Mazuka, Denis Burnham and Thierry Nazzi

Developmental Science, Vol.29(5), pp.1-14

2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70271

PMID: 42621832

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Abstract

Applied and developmental psychology

Biological psychology

Psycholinguistics (incl. speech production and comprehension)

Expanding knowledge

cortical tracking

crosslinguistic

English/French/Japanese

infancy

linguistic rhythm

speech/nonspeech

It has been proposed that the world's languages fall into three rhythmic classes according to the units that determine their rhythmic structure: stress-based (e.g., English), syllable-based (e.g., French), and mora-based (e.g., Japanese). These rhythmic differences modulate language-specific processing in adults and young infants. It has also been proposed that the syllable is the default rhythmic unit across languages, more prominent in acquisition and processing. This study investigated the development of these language-specific versus language-general effects on the neural processing of speech, focusing on cortical tracking at frequency bands potentially corresponding to three rhythmic units (2.5 Hz/foot, 5 Hz/syllable, 10 Hz/mora). We assessed cortical tracking in 119 infants belonging to one of three native-language groups: English, French, and Japanese, and two age groups: 4 and 8 months. Infants heard CVN (consonant-vowel-nasal) syllable strings synthesized using a native-language voice in their respective native language, a non-native voice (Polish), and a non-speech (vocoded) version of the non-native voice stimuli. In all conditions, the stimuli consisted of 100-ms morae, combining into 200-ms syllables, combining into 400-ms bisyllabic feet. In all three language groups and at both ages, results showed (1) efficient cortical tracking at 5 and 10 Hz, but inconsistent tracking at 2.5 Hz; (2) stronger tracking at 5 Hz, and (3) differential tracking of speech and non-speech stimuli. These findings establish that language-general rhythmic processing guides cortical tracking, that the cross-linguistic syllabic level is dominant until at least 8 months, and that speech stimuli are processed differently than non-speech stimuli by at least 4 months.

Details

Title: Developmental Science Cortical Tracking of Speech Across Rhythm Classes in English-, French-, and Japanese-Learning 4-and 8-Month-Old Infants
Authors: Varghese Peter (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Marina Kalashnikova (Author) - Ikerbasque
Sandrien van Ommen (Author) - Université Paris Cité
Reiko Mazuka (Author) - Duke University
Denis Burnham (Author) - Western Sydney University
Thierry Nazzi (Corresponding Author) - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Publication details: Developmental Science, Vol.29(5), pp.1-14
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Date published: 2026
DOI: 10.1111/desc.70271
ISSN: 1467-7687
PMID: 42621832
Copyright note: © 2026 The Author(s). Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Data Availability: Data cannot be uploaded to an open repository since we do not have ethical approval to do so, and we did not collect participants' consent for making data openly available. However, we will be able to share anonymized data upon request by researchers who have obtained the necessary ethical permissions to analyze these data.
Grants: ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, CE140100041, Australian Research Council (Australia, Canberra) - ARC
Grant note: In France, it was funded by an ANR-DFG grant (ANR-16-FRAL-0007) and funds from LABEX EFL (ANR-10-LABX-0083) to Thierry Nazzi, and a DIM Cerveau et Pensées grant (2013 MOBIBRAIN). In Japan, it was funded by JSPS grant-in-aid for Scientific Research S(16H06319) and for Specially Promoted Research (20H05617), MEXT grant for Innovative Areas #4903 (17H06382) to Reiko Mazuka.
Organisation Unit: Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; School of Health - Psychology
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991251598302621
Output Type: Journal article

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