LingStats · Linguistic statistical learning abilities in bilingual and at-risk population

The speech signal is a continuous stream, where, contrary to written language, words are not separated. Infants track regularities present in the speech signal and take advantage of such regularities to segment it. This mechanism has been called Statistical Learning and it may underlie later language development outcomes. The present project aims to investigate the linguistic statistical learning abilities during the first two years of life and how they relate to later language development in different infant populations. The current project will identify early neural and cognitive risk markers for developmental disorders and explore how/whether these correlate to statistical learning abilities and other linguistic abilities. By combining outputs of two innovative methodologies (fDCS/EEG and pupillometry), this work will contribute to the improvement of neurocognitive experimental methods suitable to test the mechanisms of language learning and processing in infants and to the foundations for implementing scientific findings in clinical and non-clinical settings.