Capacidades tempranas en la percepción del habla y su utilización como indicadores para la detección de trastornos

This paper summarizes information relative to speech perception capacities in the first year of life. Data from experimental research are presented, showing infants' early sensitivities, their capacity to identify and to differentiate the sound pattern of their native language, the beginning of word segmentation and the perceptual reorganization processes of speech sounds that take place during the second semester of life. The perceptual system is well adapted to cope with the specific characteristics of the linguistic input, be it monolingual or bilingual in nature, and this adaptation can be observed in differential response patterns in speech perception and lexical recognition tasks before two years of age. Finally, this paper discusses the possible use of these behavioural and electrophysiological measures as early detectors of language disorders than can manifest themselves later in development (SLI and dyslexia).