Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Statistical learning may be a key component of language learning in infancy, yet its neural basis is not well established. Thegoal of this study was to measure prefrontal cortical activity during auditory statistical learning, and to determine whetherthis activity predicted infants learning of statistical structure. Using non-invasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS), we recorded changes in blood oxygenation in lateral and medial prefrontal cortex in 8.5-10.5 month old infants(n=34) while they were exposed to statistical speech patterns. The stimuli consisted of 20-second videos of infant-directedspeakers speaking in either a statistical pattern or in a repeated syllable string. We found a positive association betweenright lateral prefrontal cortex activation during exposure to novel statistical speech structures, and subsequent learning ofthese patterns. These results contribute to growing evidence that prefrontal cortical activity during infancy is measurableand correlated with learning.