We investigate whether 8 -month-old infants can detect prosodic cues relevant in sentence structuring. We recorded event-related potentials to examine online responses to the processing of prosodic boundaries. Prior studies in adults have validated the closure positive shift as re£ecting prosodic boundary perception during speech processing. The current study shows that in the event-related potentials of 8 -month-olds, a closure positive shift is elicited in relation to the prosodic boundaries

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... n speech, suggesting that these infants are able to structure speech input into prosodic units on a neurophysiological basis similar to that seen in adults. A delay in latency of the infant closure positive shift, however, suggests that children's exploitation of prosodic boundaries for the segmentation of the speech stream is still developing. NeuroReport 17:675^678