Developmental Science

Speech consists of regularities at different timescales. Already during infancy, neural electrophysiological activity aligns to these rhythms. The degree to which infants exhibit neural tracking of speech can be linked to their language development. In this study, we examined how the neural tracking of sung speech develops across age, from infancy to early childhood, and across different frequency bands (i.e., at the stress, syllabic, and phonemic rates), and whether neural tracking at each frequency and age predicts childrens language outcomes. We included 2565 children of the longitudinal YOUth cohort. Children listened to Dutch sung nursery rhymes while EEG was recorded at three measurement waves. After preprocessing the data, we included 955 children at 5 months, 1048 children at 10 months, and 795 children at 2-4 years. The final sample consisted of 750 children who also completed a receptive vocabulary test at 2-4 years. Children from 5 months onwards showed significant neural tracking of stressed syllables, syllables, and phonemes, measured with speech-brain coherence (SBC). Unexpectedly, there were no developmental changes in SBC across different frequency bands from infancy to early childhood. As expected, children with larger receptive vocabularies showed increased SBC in the stressed syllable rate. These findings suggest that stronger tracking of stressed syllables is related to individual differences in language ability.

Reported perceptual differences in autism may arise from reduced use of prior context to shape incoming sensory input. Speech perception provides a critical test of this account because stable perception requires listeners to integrate variable acoustic signals with contextual expectations. This study examined context-dependent modulation of speech encoding in autistic and non-autistic adults using the frequency-following response (FFR), a neurophysiological measure of phase-locked auditory encoding. Participants heard English intonational pitch contours presented in repetitive and variable contexts while EEG was recorded. Principal component analysis of FFR metrics yielded components indexing neural encoding fidelity and timing. Non-autistic participants showed enhanced encoding fidelity in more predictable contexts, whereas autistic participants showed reduced context-dependent modulation. Neural encoding timing also showed divergent context effects across groups, suggesting altered balance between feedback-based predictive mechanisms and locally driven adaptation processes. Within the autistic group, greater context-related modulation of encoding fidelity was associated with lower ADOS-2 Social Affect severity but poorer speech-in-noise perception, suggesting that the functional impact of contextual modulation depends on input reliability and task demands. These findings indicate that context-dependent modulation of speech encoding is altered in autism and may contribute to individual differences in auditory and social-communicative function.

Bayesian accounts of autism propose that perception is less influenced by prior expectations and more strongly driven by incoming sensory information in autistic than non-autistic individuals, with this altered balance cascading through the cognitive hierarchy to also influence higher cognitive functions. However, empirical support for these accounts remains mixed. Previous work has mostly tested these ideas in the context of objective environmental statistics, but recent work suggests that it may be subjective experience of structure, rather than structure itself, that shapes perceptual processing. Characterising these subjective experiences in autistic individuals is therefore crucial for understanding predictive processing in autism. In the present study, we thus examined subjective experience of statistical structure in autistic and non-autistic adults and tested how this experience relates to perceptual decisions. Participants were exposed to statistical regularities between action cues and visual stimuli (shapes), and we measured their speed and accuracy in reporting which shape they had seen. At the end of the study, participants were asked to estimate the probability and rate their surprise for each action-shape combination. Autistic and non-autistic participants showed similar subjective probability and surprise ratings and a comparable relationship between these ratings and perceptual decisions. Across participants, subjective ratings explained perceptual decisions better than objective structure. Together, these findings show that autistic and non-autistic adults experience statistical structure similarly, with these experiences exerting a similar influence on perceptual decisions - therefore suggesting that subjective experience plays a comparable role in predictive processing in autistic and non-autistic adults.

Neural oscillations synchronize to the rhythmic structure of speech, a process known as cortical tracking that is thought to support speech perception and language acquisition. Individual differences in cortical tracking during infancy predict later language outcomes, yet little is known about whether this neural mechanism can be shaped by recent auditory experience early in development. Here, we tested whether brief exposure to structured musical rhythms modulates cortical tracking of speech in Spanish-Basque bilingual infants at 6 and 10 months of age. Infants listened to speech preceded by either temporally regular musical sequences that mirrored the rhythmic structure of the speech signal or rhythmically irregular musical sequences. Cortical tracking was measured using electroencephalography and quantified as speech-brain coherence in the delta and theta frequency bands. Regular musical sequences enhanced subsequent cortical tracking of speech, but the effects varied across age, language, and frequency band. In Spanish, rhythmic priming enhanced delta-band tracking at 10 months of age, whereas in Basque it enhanced theta-band tracking at both 6 and 10 months. These language-specific effects suggest that rhythmic priming interacts with the temporal properties of individual languages and infants' developing linguistic experience. Together, the findings demonstrate that cortical tracking is a highly flexible neural mechanism during infancy and can be rapidly modulated by structured rhythmic input. Thus, we identify rhythmic experience as a potential pathway through which infants' auditory environment shapes neural speech processing during language development.

Children often outperform adults in probabilistic statistical learning tasks, yet the mechanisms underlying this developmental advantage remain poorly understood. Here, we used eye-tracking measures of belief updating to examine how children and adults acquire and update predictions in a probabilistic sequence-learning task. Using the standard (oculomotor) reaction time measure, children showed stronger statistical learning than adults, replicating previous behavioral findings while revealing a more detailed profile of developmental differences in statistical learning. Critically, children updated their predictions more frequently: they were less likely to repeat previous predictions and more likely to shift their expectations in response to new input. Adults, in contrast, showed greater persistence, tending to maintain prior predictions even when those predictions were inconsistent with the underlying statistical structure. Despite these pronounced differences in updating behavior, the processing and use of prediction errors were remarkably similar across age groups. These findings indicate that developmental differences in statistical learning do not primarily arise from how prediction errors are computed, but rather from how prior beliefs and incoming information are weighted during belief updating. Children's enhanced learning may therefore reflect reduced reliance on stable priors and greater sensitivity to current sensory evidence, supporting a more exploratory learning strategy. Adults, by contrast, appear to favor an exploitative strategy that stabilizes existing predictions but reduces flexibility in probabilistic environments. More broadly, the results suggest that developmental changes in statistical learning may reflect age-related differences in how readily learners revise their predictions in response to incoming evidence. By integrating sensitive oculomotor measures with analyses that probe the mechanisms underlying belief updating, the present study provides a more fine-grained account of how predictive learning changes across development and offers a framework for reconciling previously inconsistent developmental findings in statistical learning.

Contextual word learning is a fundamental mechanism for vocabulary acquisition during childhood. In adults, successful inference of word meaning from context is intrinsically rewarding, and is associated with greater enjoyment and greater activity in reward-related brain regions. Whether similar reward mechanisms support word learning in children, and whether they differ as a function of ability, remains unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses during contextual word learning in 25 children aged 11-13 years with typical reading skills and in 20 age-matched children with dyslexia. Neurotypical readers showed enhanced activation in core reward-processing regions, including the ventral striatum, when successfully learning the meanings of novel words. In contrast, children with dyslexia did not exhibit comparable reward-related responses despite performing the same task. Crucially, this group difference was specific to word learning, as no significant group differences were observed in ventral striatal responses during a non-linguistic monetary reward task. In addition, to confirm the behavioural relevance of these neural findings, we examined an age-matched, independent sample of children. We found that stronger reading skills were associated with greater enjoyment during successful word learning. Together, these results suggest that interactions between reward and language systems during contextual word learning is influenced by reading proficiency. Reduced intrinsic reward responses to successful language learning may contribute to differences in reading development and have implications for the design of more engaging and effective reading interventions for struggling readers.

While evidence suggests magnocellular deficits in the geniculostriate pathway in adults with dyslexia, neural deficits in the subcortical pathways during childhood remain unclear. Here, we used high-resolution fMRI to investigate subcortical abnormalities in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. Fast achromatic motion stimuli and slowly drifting chromatic gratings were used to assess magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) functions, respectively. Relative to controls, children with dyslexia showed a selective reduction in responses to the M stimulus in the ventromedial pulvinar (vmPul) and the superficial layers of the superior colliculus (SCs), along with significantly reduced SCs-vmPul connectivity. Importantly, while vmPul responses to the M stimulus were positively associated with reading skills in healthy controls, this correlation was absent in children with dyslexia. Unlike previous findings in adults, the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) exhibited a non-selective reduction in responses to both stimuli, no volume reduction, and no correlation with reading ability. These findings demonstrate a selective deficit to achromatic motion processing in the colliculus-pulvinar pathway in children with dyslexia, which contributes to their reading difficulties. This early subcortical disruption differs from, and precedes, the neural deficits previously reported in the adult LGN, offering new insight into the developmental trajectory of dyslexia.

Racial equity remains a critical challenge in postsecondary science education, as Black students experience higher attrition rates and diminished well-being compared to their White peers. While active learning has been shown to reduce failure rates and narrow achievement gaps, the interpersonal affordances and constraints of peer discussions within these settings remain underexplored for Black students. Grounded in Critical Race Theory and utilizing the analytical lenses of racial microaggressions, microaffirmations, and Community Cultural Wealth, this study addresses this issue by investigating the racialized interpersonal experiences of Black students in active learning college science classrooms. Through semi-structured interviews, this study explores the nature of both exclusionary and affirming peer interactions and how students navigate these dynamics. Findings reveal that Black students frequently encounter racialized microaggressions--manifestations of macro-level anti-Blackness-- in the classroom which contribute to isolation and racial battle fatigue. Conversely, students describe instances of microaffirmations, predominantly through small counterspaces created by and for other students of color, which validate their intellectual contributions and foster a sense of belonging. Despite facing these tensions, participants advocate for active learning as a beneficial practice, provided that instructors implement explicit, equitable structures and facilitate culturally responsive classroom climates. These findings offer actionable implications for researchers and practitioners to design more inclusive active learning environments by explicitly addressing interpersonal dynamics, promoting cultural competence, and co-constructing humanizing science classroom climates.

Growing evidence of animals combining discrete, meaningful calls into sequences--a feature once thought unique to linguistic syntax--has presented the opportunity to investigate the evolutionary origins of syntactic communication. The arbitrary assignment of meaning to words marks an important step in human language evolution, and a necessary precursor to generating further meaning through sentences. Studying how other animals that produce call sequences learn the meaning of these signals could help shed light on how referentiality and semantic combinatoriality evolved. Given the presence of meaningful call sequences has only recently been revealed in several non-human animals, ontogenetic studies of the comprehension of these vocalisations are, to date, non-existent. Western Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen dorsalis) combine discrete calls into a diverse array of call sequences. Recent evidence shows these sequences are socially learned, but the developmental stage at which fledglings respond correctly to them remains unstudied. We performed playbacks of a discrete alarm call and call sequence to fledglings over the course of their first 18 weeks out of the nest, identifying when they differentiate between the low-level disturbance associated with the discrete call and the high-grade aerial threat associated with the sequence. Fledglings showed immediate vigilance to both vocalisations but exhibited significantly greater vigilance and upward scanning following the sequence. Critically, fledglings showed this response to the sequence from the first week of testing, with no effect of age on the response to either vocalisation. These findings suggest that comprehension precedes production of sequences in magpies and that sequence meanings are either learned rapidly or have an innate basis. While further investigation is essential, this study offers the first empirical insight into the ontogenetic emergence of combinatorial comprehension in a non-human animal.

BackgroundEarly life adversity (ELA) is associated with notable negative consequences across development. Experiences of deprivation may affect neurocognitive development, while experiences of threat may alter emotion processing. Deprivation and threat may also differentially influence reward processing. However, unique consequences of deprivation and threat beyond low family resources are debated. MethodsWe employed an exposure vs. control data analytic approach to isolate deprivation and threat influences from socioeconomic resources. Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD(R)) Study youth exposed to neither deprivation nor threat (N=2408-2962) were matched to youth exposed to deprivation-only (N=638-721), threat-only (N=198-232), or threat non-exclusively (threat+: N=382-464) based on family income, parental education, race/ethnicity, sex, and age. Multivariate analyses were used to distinguish each ELA group from their respective control groups in the neurocognitive domain (resting-state connectomic maturation, cognitive task performance, and cortical grey matter thickness at two timepoints) and in the neuroaffective domain (nucleus accumbens and caudate activation to reward anticipation and amygdala and insula activation to fearful faces). ResultsIn the neurocognitive domain, similar latent variables (LVs) differentiated the deprivation and threat+ groups from their respective matched control groups. This LV corresponded to neurocognitive maturation, loading positively on cortical functional maturation and task performance, and negatively on cortical grey matter thickness. This LV was weaker in the deprivation and threat+ groups compared to controls. In the neuroaffective domain, no significant LVs were found. ConclusionBoth threat and deprivation exposure during childhood may delay neurocognitive development in early adolescence beyond their co-occurrence with low socioeconomic resources.

PurposeInterpersonal entrainment, defined as the tendency of interacting individuals to temporally align their behaviours, is considered a key mechanism supporting social interactions through predictive and multisensory processes. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), characterized by social and communication difficulties, has been associated with atypical predictive and multisensory integration processes, which may affect spontaneous entrainment to others actions during rhythmic interactions. MethodsThe present study investigated spontaneous interpersonal entrainment in 24 autistic and 22 neurotypical young adults using a unidirectional adaptation of the drifting metronomes paradigm developed by Rosso et al. (2021). Participants synchronized their finger tapping with an auditory metronome while either seeing or not seeing a partners hand movements performing the same task at a slightly different tempo. Individual synchronization performance was assessed using asynchrony measures and computational modelling of sensorimotor synchronization, while interpersonal coordination dynamics were quantified using joint recurrence analysis. ResultsVisual exposure to the partners hand movements significantly increased tapping variability while simultaneously enhancing spontaneous interpersonal entrainment. Contrary to previous findings, these effects were comparable across groups, suggesting similar sensitivity to spontaneous low-level interpersonal coupling under stable and predictable conditions. ConclusionOverall, the findings support accounts proposing selective rather than generalized atypicalities in predictive processing and interpersonal entrainment in ASD.

It has been demonstrated that people who stutter exhibit atypical motor control not only in speech tasks but also movements in the non-speech effector system, such as finger or arm motion. Notably, studies have reported that people who stutter show limited sensorimotor adaptation (i.e., updating subsequent movements in response to sensory errors) in both speech auditory-motor (i.e., updating speech movements in response to altered auditory feedback) and upper limb visuo-motor (i.e., updating arm movements in response to altered visual feedback) tasks. Given that speech auditory-motor adaptation is mostly if not entirely implicit (i.e., participants are unaware of the learning), it is thought that people who stutter have limited implicit adaptation in the speech effector system. It remains unclear however, whether such limited implicit learning also extends to upper limb visuomotor adaptation. Here, we examined implicit visuomotor learning in adults who stutter through the means of arm reaching adaptation to clamped visual feedback which provides a cursor that is fixed in direction (8{degrees} counterclockwise from targets) regardless of the participants actual hand location. All participants gradually adjusted their reach angle towards the clockwise direction, adapting in response to clamped feedback, but adults who stutter showed less adaptation compared to adults who do not stutter. In addition, computational modeling suggests that this implicit adaptation difficulties in stuttering individuals may reflect reduced error sensitivity. Together, our findings suggest that implicit sensorimotor learning difficulties in adults who stutter may generalize across multiple effector systems, providing important implications for understanding sensorimotor mechanisms underlying stuttering. Significance statementBy employing the clamped visual feedback paradigm during arm reaching movements, we demonstrated that adults who stutter showed less implicit visuomotor adaptation compared to adults who do not stutter. This study provides the first evidence that implicit sensorimotor adaptation limitations in developmental stuttering generalize across multiple effector systems. Our findings not only add to a growing body of evidence that stuttering is associated with domain-general sensorimotor difficulties but also point to specific underlying processes that may lead to stuttering.

Attention abilities, that are critical for most real-life cognitive task, can vary greatly across individuals. A plethora of behavioral and neural metric are commonly utilized to quantify attention; however, these often yield inconsistent and non-replicable results, raising questions as to which measures reliably account for and capture individual differences. To address this tension, here we employed a within-subject cross-paradigm design and quantified both behavioral and EEG-based neural measures associated with attention functioning, to test which measures converged across a gradient of artificial and ecological tasks. We found Inter-Subject Correlation (ISC), which quantifies the similarity in the pattern of neural response across individuals, captured consistent individual differences across both an artificial (Auditory Oddball) and ecological (Attention to Speech) task, with some correlation with performance. Moreover, we found that P300 neural responses to surprising events were qualitatively similar across artificial and ecological tasks, supporting their generalization across contexts. Interestingly, traditional cognitive-behavioral measures of attention - both from speeded response-time tasks and self-report of ADHD symptoms (ASRS) were not correlated with each other nor did they explain variance in neural metrics, nor were they explained by variation in general cognitive abilities (working memory or fluid intelligence). While these results demonstrate the shortcomings of many established measures of attention to generalize across contexts, they also point to the potential of neural measures, and specifically ISC, to serve as reliable indicators of individual differences and to bridge the gap between artificial and ecological studies of attention functioning.

This study investigated how different forms of task influence the oral performance of Chinese second-language learners and native speakers. By analyzing data from 40 Chinese second-language learners and 40 native speakers through picture description tasks, formal and informal questions, and questions with different emotions (happy and unhappy), it was found that different task characteristics significantly affected language performance. Short picture tasks led to higher communication efficiency and noun rates but more errors, while long story tasks showed higher verb rates, function word rates, etc. Formal questions had more characters and nouns but lower communication efficiency compared to informal ones. Also, happy emotion questions resulted in fewer characters, sentences, and errors than unhappy emotion questions. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of task-based language performance in Chinese as a second language and offer practical implications for teaching, textbook compilation, and student evaluation.

How children come to evaluate social-affective cues is shaped within the family, yet the neural expression of this process and its dependence on family relationships remain unclear. We tested whether parent-child similarity in the neural coding of affective judgment varies with family environment, and whether it relates to youth affective distress. Twenty-five parent-child dyads (youth, mean age 11.8; parents mean age 42 years) judged faces morphed along an angry-to-happy continuum as positive or negative during fMRI. For each participant, we defined an evaluative choice axis distinguishing faces judged positive from negative, independent of expression intensity. Using searchlight-based parent-child cross-decoding, we tested whether one dyad member's evaluative coding predicted the other member's judgments, indexing shared evaluative coding rather than shared sensitivity to expression intensity. Inference focused a priori on medial prefrontal cortex. There was no reliable average parent-child neural similarity across the sample. Instead, higher family conflict was associated with lower parent-child neural similarity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Demonstrating specificity to negative relational strain, this effect was not observed for complementary dimensions of family cohesion or identity. Moreover, the effect was specific to true dyads rather than random pairings and to vmPFC rather than a face-selective network or other medial prefrontal regions. Lower vmPFC similarity showed a preliminary association with higher youth affective distress. These findings indicate that affective valuation, rather than sensory encoding, may be a representational level at which perceived family conflict is reflected in parent-child neural similarity.

Error monitoring allows for detecting mistakes and adapting behavior. Error monitoring is associated with increased theta (4-7 Hz) EEG activity recorded at midfrontal electrode sites located over the medial frontal cortex. Increases in theta synchrony after errors between midfrontal and lateral electrode sites, located over lateral prefrontal, motor, and sensory/parietal brain regions, are associated with post-error behavioral adaptations. However, there is a lack of research into whether such error-related theta inter-regional synchrony dynamics exhibit age-related changes across adolescence and whether such changes differ as a function of social observation. Moreover, there are discrepancies across studies in terms of how error-related theta synchrony between different electrode sites relates to specific forms of post-error adjustments. In this study, we used behavioral and EEG data from 262 adolescents aged 10-14 years who performed a flanker task twice: alone and while observed by a peer. Regardless of social observation, we found age-related increases in error-related midfrontal-frontolateral and midfrontal-midlateral theta synchrony. Additionally, we found that error-related theta synchrony between midfrontal and posterolateral regions increased only in the alone condition. Leveraging the shrinking spotlight drift diffusion model (SSP-DDM), we identified a positive association between error-related midfrontal-posterolateral theta synchrony and post-error attentional control but found no effects of social observation. These results are the first to demonstrate that error-related theta synchrony increases from early to mid-adolescence. Additionally, this work specifically links error-related midfrontal-posterolateral theta synchrony to post-error attentional control using computational modeling.

This study examined the extent to which goodness of pronunciation (GoP) scores and phonological posterior probabilities capture perceptual ratings of speech severity in individuals with motor speech disorders (MSD). Speech recordings of the word catastrophe were obtained from 489 participants, including 333 neurologically typical controls and 156 individuals with MSD. GoP scores were derived using traditional acoustic features and self-supervised speech representations, including WavLM and XLS-R, across multiple modeling approaches, while phonological posterior probabilities were extracted using Phonet. Model performance was evaluated using Kendall's rank correlations, regression, and receiver operating characteristic analyses against speech-language pathologists' perceptual ratings of sound distortion and intelligibility. Both GoP and phonological posterior probabilities were significantly associated with perceptual ratings. Self-supervised speech representations substantially outperformed traditional acoustic features, with WavLM-based GoP using k-nearest neighbors achieving the strongest performance. Across correlation, regression, and classification analyses, GoP consistently outperformed phonological posterior probabilities for both sound distortion and intelligibility. Age and gender had minimal influence on model-derived measures or their relationships with perceptual ratings. These findings demonstrate the value of self-supervised GoP as an objective measure of speech impairment while highlighting the complementary role of phonological posterior probabilities in characterizing articulatory aspects of motor speech disorders.

Prenatal and early postnatal life is a period of rapid brain growth, making the developing brain particularly susceptible to external influences. Adapting the biopsychosocial model of mental health and illness, this review provides a systematic overview of how biological, psychological, and social exposures from conception to age three critically converge to shape brain development and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Following a pre-registered protocol and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines, 55 studies were included, primarily published in the past 15 years. Earlier studies focused predominantly on biological exposures, while more recent work has increasingly examined psychological exposures and, more rarely, social exposures. While each exposure exhibited its own pattern of brain alterations and neurodevelopmental changes, an overarching pattern emerged across the different components of the biopsychosocial model. Adverse biological exposures were consistently associated with delayed brain maturation as reflected by brain imaging measures. Adverse psychosocial exposures showed a more complex pattern of associations with both delayed and accelerated brain maturation. Crucially, adverse exposures, whether associated with delayed or accelerated brain maturation, were consistently associated with poorer neurodevelopmental outcomes, underscoring the necessity of considering both brain and behavior when estimating the impact of early exposures. We conclude that research into early-life exposures on brain maturation and neurodevelopmental outcomes is on the rise, but there is a great need for further investigation, in particular of psychological and social exposures. The interactions between exposures, the brain, and outcomes are highly complex, requiring assessment of both brain development and behavior together, ideally in within-subject longitudinal designs in future studies.

Globally, 60% of the population has experienced at least one type of adversity (e.g., emotional abuse, bullying) across infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Such experiences have been linked to an increased risk for mental health disorders. Changes in brain structure following experiences of childhood adversity have been hypothesised to be a mechanistic pathway explaining later mental health issues. However, to understand how changes in brain structure might mediate the effects of adversity, it is essential to identify which underlying neuronal processes may be affected by different types of adverse experiences. A key open question is whether grey or white matter is more vulnerable to adversity, as these two structures reflect distinct neurobiological mechanisms. This study investigated whether differences in trajectories of grey and white matter development during adolescence can be explained by exposure to different types of adversity. We applied the Adverse Adolescent Experiences Framework (Pollmann et al., 2025) categorising adversity into four levels: Intrapersonal (e.g., accidents), Caregiver (e.g., emotional neglect), Peer (e.g., bullying), and Community (e.g., neighbourhood safety). Exposure to each of the four factors was estimated through principal components analyses. We analysed two large longitudinal datasets: the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (~12,000 adolescents measured at ages 10, 12, and 14) and the IMAGEN study (~1,400 adolescents measured at ages 14, 19, and 22). Using latent growth curve models, we captured individual differences in brain development by estimating baseline levels (intercepts) and rates of change (slopes) for total grey matter volume and mean white matter fractional anisotropy. In both cohorts, we found significant interindividual variability in baseline levels and rates of change for both grey matter volume and fractional anisotropy. Caregiver, Peer, and Community adversities were negatively associated only with the intercepts of grey matter volume and white matter fractional anisotropy. Importantly, associations differed between grey and white matter. In ABCD, Peer and Community adversities were more strongly associated with grey matter volume intercepts. In contrast, in IMAGEN, Caregiver, Peer and Community adversities were more strongly linked to white matter fractional anisotropy intercepts. This suggests that adversity has unique associations with grey and white matter, rather than exerting a uniform influence on brain structure. By demonstrating that different environments generate distinct biological associations with brain maturation, this work underscores the need to consider both grey and white matter when assessing the neurodevelopmental pathways to outcomes across the lifespan.

Rhythm perception ability underpins music and language processing, and its developmental origins trace back to the earliest periods of life. While most rhythm patterns contain a variety of inter-onset intervals, listeners typically extract a steady underlying beat periodicity, as well as beat grouping periodicities (groups of two or three beats will be at frequencies 1/2 or 1/3, respectively, of that of the primary beat), forming a metrical hierarchy. While the developing brain can track auditory rhythm before birth, a previous study found that neural sensitivity to faster beat-related periodicities emerges early in third trimester of gestation, whereas encoding of slower metrical structure periodicities only appears closer to term birth. However, as rhythm patterns were only presented at one tempo, neural sensitivity to metrical structure could not be disentangled from sensitivity to tempo during early development. Thus, here we presented auditory rhythmic sequences at two different tempi and used high-resolution electroencephalography to measure neural sensitivity to their encoding in full-term newborns and young adults. Adults demonstrated a similar sensitivity to metrical structure across tempi, with greatest response at the duple metrical frequency regardless of tempo. Newborn neural responses, by contrast, were tempo-dependent, displaying markedly different response patterns across beat and meter frequencies at the different tempi. Together, these results reveal that tempo and metrical structure interact in shaping how the neonatal brain encodes auditory rhythm, suggesting that early neural processing may be constrained in its ability to track slower periodicities, and highlighting a developmental shift in the relative contributions of tempo and metrical structure to rhythmic processing.