When learning a new language, one must segment words from continuous speech and associate them with meanings. These complex processes can be boosted by attentional mechanisms triggered by multi-sensory information. Previous electrophysiological studies suggest that brain oscillations are sensitive to different hierarchical complexity levels of the input, making them a plausible neural substrate for speech parsing. Here, we investigated the functional role of brain oscillations during concurrent speech segmentation and meaning acquisition in sixty 9-year-old children. We collected EEG data during an audio-visual statistical learning task during which children were exposed to a learning condition with consistent word-picture associations and a random condition with inconsistent word-picture associations before being tested on their ability to recall words and word-picture associations. We capitalized on the brain dynamics to align neural activity to the same rate as an external rhythmic stimulus to explore modulations of neural synchronization and phase synchronization between electrodes during multi-sensory word learning. Results showed enhanced power at both word- and syllabic-rate and increased EEG phase synchronization between frontal and occipital regions in the learning compared to the random condition. These findings suggest that multi-sensory cueing and attentional mechanisms play an essential role in children's successful word learning.

学习一门新语言时，必须从连续的语音中分割单词并将其与含义联系起来。多感官信息触发的注意力机制可以促进这些复杂的过程。先前的电生理学研究表明，大脑振荡对输入的不同层次复杂性级别敏感，这使得它们成为语音解析的合理神经基础。在这里，我们研究了 60 名 9 岁儿童的大脑振荡在并发语音分段和意义获取过程中的功能作用。我们在一项视听统计学习任务中收集了脑电图数据，在该任务中，孩子们被暴露在具有一致的单词-图片关联的学习条件和具有不一致的单词-图片关联的随机条件下，然后测试他们回忆单词和单词-图片的能力协会。我们利用大脑动力学将神经活动调整到与外部节律刺激相同的速率，以探索多感官单词学习过程中电极之间神经同步和相位同步的调制。结果显示，与随机条件相比，学习中单词率和音节率的能力增强，额叶和枕叶区域之间的脑电图相位同步性增强。这些发现表明，多感官提示和注意力机制在儿童成功的单词学习中发挥着重要作用。