Demystifying infant vocal imitation: The roles of mouth looking and speaker’s gaze

Imafuku, Masahiro; Kanakogi, Yasuhiro; Butler, David L.; Myowa, Masako

doi:10.1111/desc.12825

Cited by 18 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(195 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Furthermore, as the effect of inversion was visible in looking towards the mouth region, it suggests that upright face orientation is especially important for speech perception. In line with previous studies [25,26,27,28,38], our results support the notion that both the specialisation for speech and the specialisation for faces are related in infancy.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…The fact that the effect of inversion was specific to looking towards the mouth region supports the idea that AV speech processing development is related to the emergence of configural face processing. A similar effect was shown by Imafuku and collaborators [38] who found that face inversion makes audiovisual information about vowels more difficult to perceive, which leads to limited imitation. However, their study suggested that inversion affects speech already in 6-month-olds, so earlier than in ours.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Attention to speaking mouth is reduced by face inversion in infants only from 9 months of age

Laudańska¹,

Dopierała²,

Szmytke³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Configural processing is a specialised perceptual mechanism that allows adult humans to quickly process facial information. It emerges before the first birthday and can be disrupted by upside-down presentation of the face (inversion). To date, little is known about the relationship of configural face processing to the emerging knowledge of audiovisual (AV) speech in infancy. Using eye-tracking we measured attention to speaking mouth in upright and inverted faces that were either congruent or incongruent with the speech sound. Face inversion affected looking at AV speech only in older infants (9- to 11- and 12- to 14-month-olds). The youngest group of infants (5- to 7-month-olds) did not show any differences in looking durations between upright and inverted faces, while in both older groups face inversion led to reduced looking at the articulating mouth. We also observed a stronger interest in the eyes in the youngest infants, followed by an increase in looking time to the mouth in both older groups. Our findings suggest that configural face processing is involved in AV speech processing already in infancy, indicating early integration of face and speech processing mechanisms in cognitive development.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Attention to speaking mouth is reduced by face inversion in infants only from 9 months of age

Laudańska¹,

Dopierała²,

Szmytke³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, developmental changes in laughter production may also reflect social learning processes. Infants as young as six months have been found to mimic sounds produced by their caregivers [32], and infants are highly receptive to caregivers' responses to their pre-linguistic vocalizations [33]. In particular, infants adapt subsequent vocalizations based on social feedback [29] and human adults have a preference for voiced, songlike laughs which are produced during exhalation [24].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ontogeny of human laughter

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human adult laughter is characterized by vocal bursts produced predominantly during exhalation, yet apes laugh while exhaling and inhaling. The current study investigated our hypothesis that laughter of human infants changes from laughter similar to that of apes to increasingly resemble that of human adults over early development. We further hypothesized that the more laughter is produced on the exhale, the more positively it is perceived. To test these predictions, novice ( n = 102) and expert (phonetician, n = 15) listeners judged the extent to which human infant laughter ( n = 44) was produced during inhalation or exhalation, and the extent to which they found the laughs pleasant and contagious. Support was found for both hypotheses, which were further confirmed in two pre-registered replication studies. Likely through social learning and the anatomical development of the vocal production system, infants' initial ape-like laughter transforms into laughter similar to that of adult humans over the course of ontogeny.

show abstract

“…We tracked infants' eye movements to assess their EM preference. As an exploratory measure, we also video recorded the infants during the experiment to quantify their babbling and to observe their imitation of the target vowels during the experiment, since a link between attention to the mouth and vowel vocalization has been demonstrated (Imafuku et al, 2019). Spanish and Basque languages provide an ideal test bed for AV vowel processing in bilinguals.…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyes can tell. Attention to the eyes and the mouth during audiovisual vowel processing in monolingual and bilingual infants

Pejovic¹,

Yee²,

Molnár³

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

After 6 months of age monolingual infants look more to the mouth of a speaker when there is a mismatch (as opposed to match) between heard and (visually) articulated native consonants. Here, we examined whether monolingual and bilingual infants increase their attention to speakers’ mouth when processing vowels. We compared 4.5- and 8-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants’ attention to the eyes and the mouth while presented with native vowels in audiovisual match and mismatch conditions. We observed that 4.5-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants detect the AV mismatch by increasing their attention to the eyes, not to the mouth – as has been previously observed for consonants. However, by 8 months of age monolingual and bilingual infants’ attention to the eyes and the mouth is not affected by audiovisual disruption. Our findings suggest that audiovisual vowel and consonant processing differ during the first year of life, and that the specific type of linguistic experience does not modulate selective attention to the mouth or the eyes during vowel processing.

show abstract

Demystifying infant vocal imitation: The roles of mouth looking and speaker’s gaze

Cited by 18 publications

References 80 publications

Attention to speaking mouth is reduced by face inversion in infants only from 9 months of age

Attention to speaking mouth is reduced by face inversion in infants only from 9 months of age

The ontogeny of human laughter

Eyes can tell. Attention to the eyes and the mouth during audiovisual vowel processing in monolingual and bilingual infants

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About