Sound processing is an important scaffold for early language acquisition. Here we investigate its relationship to three components of phonological processing in young children (∼age 3): Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonological Memory (PM), and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN). While PA is believed to hinge upon consistency of sound processing to distinguish and manipulate word features, PM relies on an internal store of the sounds of language and RAN relies on fluid production of those sounds. Given the previously demonstrated link between PA and the auditory system, we hypothesized that only this component would be associated with auditory neural stability. Moreover, we expected relationships to manifest at early ages because additional factors may temper the association in older children. We measured across-trial stability of the frequency-following response, PA, PM, and RAN longitudinally in twenty-seven children. Auditory neural stability at age ∼3 years exclusively predicts PA, but this relationship vanishes in older children.

中文翻译：

---

稳定的听觉处理是典型的学龄前儿童语音意识的基础

声音处理是早期语言习得的重要支架。在这里，我们研究了它与幼儿（~3 岁）语音处理的三个组成部分的关系：语音意识（PA）、语音记忆（PM）和快速自动命名（RAN）。虽然 PA 被认为取决于声音处理的一致性以区分和操纵单词特征，但 PM 依赖于语言声音的内部存储，而 RAN 依赖于这些声音的流畅产生。鉴于先前证明的 PA 和听觉系统之间的联系，我们假设只有这个组件与听觉神经稳定性有关。此外，我们预计关系会在早期表现出来，因为其他因素可能会缓和年龄较大的儿童的关联。我们纵向测量了 27 名儿童的频率跟随响应、PA、PM 和 RAN 的跨试验稳定性。大约 3 岁的听觉神经稳定性专门预测 PA，但这种关系在年龄较大的儿童中消失。