LANGUAGE-ACQUISITION AND CEREBRAL SPECIALIZATION IN 20-MONTH-OLD INFANTS

The purpose of the present study was to examine patterns of neural act ivity relevant to language processing in 20-month-old infants, and to determine whether or not changes in cerebral organization occur as a f unction of specific changes in language development. Event-related pot entials (ERPs) were recorded as children listened to a series of words whose meaning was understood by the child, words whose meaning the ch ild did not understand, and backward words. The results showed that sp ecific and different ERP components discriminated comprehended words f rom unknown and from backward words. Distinct lateral and anterior-pos terior specializations were apparent in ERP responsiveness to the diff erent types of words. Moreover, the results suggested that increasing language abilities were associated with increasing cerebral specializa tion for language processing over the temporal and parietal regions of the left hemisphere.