Neurophysiological evidence of single-shot semantic mapping in the developing brain

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2025. Vol. 19. Article 1533833.

Vasilyeva M., Knyazeva V., Elena D. Artemenko, Vershinina E., Garbaruk E., Boboshko M., Aleksandrov A., Shtyrov Y.

Rapid acquisition of new words and construction of large vocabularies is a unique capacity of developing human brain. This process is to a large degree mediated by a neurocognitive mechanism known as «fast mapping» (FM) which allows the child to quickly map new words onto neural representations after even a single exposure to them, using context-driven inference. However, the neurophysiological bases of this mechanism are still poorly understood. To address this open question, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate brain dynamics elicited by novel words following a single-shot audiovisual semantic learning task and to estimate cortical underpinnings of this process in healthy preschool children. We found that a single presentation of novel words in association with novel objects leads to a decrease in the brain’s activation, registered as an early N400 effect for newly learnt word forms, indicating rapid lexicosemantic memory trace formation in the developing brain. Interestingly, source analysis indicated this effect to be chiefly underpinned by activity modulations in the right-hemispheric temporal cortices, indicating their involvement in speech processing at an early age (known to be diminished later in life). Overall, current findings provide the electrophysiological evidence of the specific mechanism in the developing brain that promotes rapid integration of novel word representations into neocortical lexicosemantic networks after a single exposure, subserving efficient native word acquisition and mastering the mother tongue.

Keywords: EEG, preschool children, ERP, Novel word learning, fast mapping (FM)