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REVIEW article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Developmental Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1474961

Developmental Origins of Natural Sound Perception

Provisionally accepted
Silvia Polver Silvia Polver 1,2*Judit Gervain Judit Gervain 1,2,3Christian Lorenzi Christian Lorenzi 4
  • 1 University of Padua, Padua, Italy
  • 2 Padua Neuroscience Center, University of Padua, Padua, Veneto, Italy
  • 3 Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, Université Paris Cité and CNRS, Paris, France
  • 4 UMR8248 Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, Paris, Île-de-France, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Infants are exposed to a myriad of sounds early in life, including caregivers’ speech, songs, human-made and natural (non-anthropogenic) environmental sounds. While decades of research have established that infants have sophisticated perceptual abilities to process speech, less is known about how they perceive natural environmental sounds. This review synthesizes current findings about the perception of natural environmental sounds in the first years of life, emphasizing their role in auditory development and describing how these studies contribute to the emerging field of human auditory ecology. Some of the existing studies explore infants’ responses to animal vocalizations and water sounds. Infants demonstrate an initial broad sensitivity to primate vocalizations, which narrows to human speech through experience. They also show early recognition of water sounds, with preferences for natural over artificial water sounds already at birth, indicating an evolutionary ancient sensitivity. However, this ability undergoes refinement with age and experience. The few studies available suggest that infants’ auditory processing of natural sounds is complex and influenced by both genetic predispositions and exposure. Building on these existing results, this review highlights the need for ecologically valid experimental paradigms that better represent the natural auditory environments humans evolved in. Understanding how children process natural soundscapes not only deepens our understanding of auditory development but also offers practical insights for advancing environmental awareness, improving auditory interventions for children with hearing loss, and promoting well-being through exposure to natural sounds.

    Keywords: human auditory ecology, Auditory Development, infants, Children, Environmental sounds, Natural soundscapes, animal vocalizations, Water sounds

    Received: 02 Aug 2024; Accepted: 26 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Polver, Gervain and Lorenzi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Silvia Polver, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.