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--></style><title>Re: Infants reacting to their given
name</title></head><body>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Dear colleagues,<br>
<br>
This is a request on behalf of a friend and colleague, who is a
neuro-surgeon.<br>
<br>
He and his team are measuring the brain activity of comatose,
minimally conscious and locked-in patients by exposing them to their
given names (as opposed to other first names). The aim is to
develop a diagnostic for level of consciousness and a prognosis
procedure for recovery.<br>
My colleague's assumption is that a person's given name is the most
'ingrained' of all linguistic stimuli. He has references
indicating that the given name is retained the longest in the case of
dementia, and that it is the first stimulus to which patients react
after total anesthesia.<br>
He is now looking for references that show (or suggest) that the given
name is the first specific 'word' or self-contained linguistic unit
which infants recognize or somehow react to. He suspects that
this capacity develops before the age of 7 months.<br>
<br>
Please send any references or comments to me. I will pass them
on and summarize for the list.<br>
<br>
Thanks for your help.<br>
<br>
--<br>
Alex HOUSEN</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Germanic Languages Dept. &
Centre for Linguistics</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Vrije Universiteit Brussel</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Alex.Housen@vub.ac.be</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>The reference you need is</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times" size="+2"
color="#000000">Mandel, D. R., Jusczyk, P. W. & Pisoni, D. B.
(1995). Infants' recognition of the sound pattern of their own
names.<i> Psychological Science, 6,</i> 315-318.</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I don't know of any other studies of this issue, but there are
some good papers about the 'cocktail party phenomenon', in which a
person hears their own name preferentially in unattended speech. The
most recent one I know of, with refs to older lit., is Wood, N. &
Cowan, N. (1995). The cocktail party phenomenon revisited: How
frequent are attention shifts to one's name in an irrelevant auditory
channel? J.of Exp. Psych.: Learn., Mem & Cog, 21, 255-260.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>-marilyn vihman</div>
<div><br></div>
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