Consonant discrimination by newborn infants: Electrophysiological differences

Abstract

We used evoked potential techniques to study the discrimination of speech and nonspeech consonant‐vowel syllables in 38 newborn infants. Auditory evoked responses (AERs) were recorded from each infant via scalp electrodes positioned over frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of each hemisphere. Analyses indicated that the AERs discriminated between the stop consonants /b/ and /g/. In addition, differences in discrimination were noted between male and female infants. These findings replicate and extend earlier work on newborn infant consonant discrimination.