The mismatch negativity to changes in speech sounds at the age of three months

This study shows that an infrequent vowel (deviant) presented among frequent vowels (standard) elicits in awake 3-month-old infants a negativity in the auditory event-related potential resembling the mismatch negativity elicited by the same stimuli in previous studies in adults (Aaltonen, Niemi, Nyrke, &Tuhkanen, 1987) and newborns (Cheour-Luhtanen et al., 1995). The mismatch negativity amplitude for the deviant vowels was larger and the event-related potentials to standard stimuli were in general more positive in 3-month-old infants than in newborns, which might reflect increased maturation of their nervous system relative to that of newborns.