"Did you call me?" 5-month-old infants own name guides their attention

Abstract

An infant's own name is a unique social cue. Infants are sensitive to their own name by 4 months of age, but whether they use their names as a social cue is unknown. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was measured as infants heard their own name or stranger's names and while looking at novel objects. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to names revealed that infants differentiate their own name from stranger names from the first phoneme. The amplitude of the ERPs to objects indicated that infants attended more to objects after hearing their own names compared to another name. Thus, by 5 months of age infants not only detect their name, but also use it as a social cue to guide their attention to events and objects in the world.

Figure 1. Example of experimental trial.

Infants heard their own name or a stranger's name in a time window of 1500 ms. After a random interval they saw the picture of a toy for 1000 ms. This trial led to the two ERP averages (to names and to objects) for each participant.

Figure 2. ERPs in response to names across groups.

Auditory grand average collapsed over groups on frontal, central and parietal channels. Arrows highlight analyzed components. The grey bar indicates the time interval of averaged waves. The horizontal tick mark, 0.2 s; vertical tick mark, 10 µV. Negative is plotted up. The infant's own name is higher in amplitude on the early anterior positive shift and on the N200-600 component.

Figure 3. ERPs in response to names separate by groups.

Auditory grand average split into the two groups on frontal, central and parietal channels. Horizontal tick mark, 0.2 s; vertical tick mark, 10 µV. Negative is plotted up. The infant's own name is higher in amplitude in the group with one control name on the anterior positive shift and in the group with ten control names on the N200-600 component.

Figure 4. ERPs in response to objects across groups.

Visual grand average collapsed over groups on frontal, central and parietal channels. Arrows highlight analyzed components. The grey bar indicates the time interval of averaged waves. Horizontal tick mark, 0.2 s; vertical tick mark, 10 µV. Negative is plotted up. Objects following the infant own name have a later Nc peak and a higher amplitude following the Nc.

Figure 5. ERPs in response to objects separate by groups.

Visual grand average split into the two groups on frontal, central and parietal channels. Horizontal tick mark, 0.2 s; vertical tick mark, 10 µV. Negative is plotted up. No group interactions were found for the visual components.