Early development of turn-taking in vocal interaction between mothers and infants

Abstract

Infants are known to engage in conversation-like exchanges from the end of the second month after birth. These ‘protoconversations’ involve both turn-taking and overlapping vocalization. Previous research has shown that the temporal organization of adult–infant turn-taking sequences is similar to that of adult verbal conversation. It has also been shown that young infants adjust the quality of their vocalization in response to the quality and timing of adult vocalization. We present new evidence of turn-taking interaction in infants aged between 8 and 21 weeks based on the analysis of 176 samples of naturalistic face-to-face interactions from 51 dyads. We found high levels of latched turns as well as frequent initiation of turn-taking by infants at these ages. Our data do not support the hypothesis that turn-taking ability increases with age between 2 and 5 months but do suggest that infants are active participants in turn-taking from the earliest age and that mothers adjust turn-taking formats to infants.

Dimensions of childhood adversity have distinct associations with neural systems underlying executive functioning

“…For infants and young children, early learning opportunities happen primarily in the context of caregiver interactions. Caregivers direct child attention to important stimuli in the environment through child-directed speech and facial displays (Gratier et al, 2015; Harder, Lange, Hansen, Væver, & Køppe, 2015; Pelucchi, Hay, & Saffran, 2009). These early interactions shape and support the development of basic associative learning mechanisms and attentional control, which in turn are the building blocks of more complex cognitive functions including numerous aspects of EF (Healey, Gopin, Grossman, Campbell, & Halperin, 2010).…”

Turn-taking in Human Communication – Origins and Implications for Language Processing

“…A second reason to think that turn-taking is simply part of our ethology is the proto-conversation evidenced in early infancy [49], where infants participate in structured exchange with caretakers (at least in Western languages) long before they understand much about language [50]. Interestingly, the timing of turn-taking of these non-linguistic vocalizations in the first 6 months approximates the timing of adult spoken conversation, although with greater overlap.…”

Rhythm in speech and animal vocalizations: a cross‐species perspective

“…Overall, from the age of 2 months on, turn‐taking structure between mother and infant vocalizations is already observable with only a 30–40% overlap between reciprocal vocalizations. The most frequent exchange structure features two to three turns, and pauses (gaps) under 1 second …”