Infants Prefer Infant‐Directed Song Over Speech

Tsang, Christine D.; Falk, Simone; Hessel, Alexandria

doi:10.1111/cdev.12647

Cited by 39 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Importantly, within-vowel-category dispersion was higher in speech than in song. This is consistent with the idea that singing compared to speaking provides more stability in the vowel domain, in duration, but also in pitch and formant structure [11,12]. At the same time, vowel space expansion appeared overall smaller in song than in speech, mainly due to more closed articulation of /a/ in singing.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

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Vowel space and f0 characteristics of infant-directed singing and speech

Audibert

Falk

2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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When adults talk to infants, they dramatically change the prosodic and acoustic structure of speech. Recently, new insights have been gained on those changes, especially on the vocalic and temporal structure of speech which are described as being more variable than in adult conversations. In the present contribution, we examine formant and fundamental frequency characteristics of different infant-directed registers, notably infant-directed speech and singing, the latter not being investigated so far. We present data from 14 German-speaking mothers singing a playsong and reading a story to their 6 months old infants, or to the experimenter. Infant-and infantabsent versions of speech and song were compared on the formant characteristics of the primary vowel triangle (/i, a, u/) and on general fundamental frequency changes. Our results show that vowel space did not differ in infant-and infantabsent versions of speech and song. However, vowel dispersion, i.e., formant variability, was higher in both infantdirected song and speech than in infant-absent versions. Consistent with previous findings, f0 was higher in infantthan infant-absent versions of speech and song, with song showing generally higher f0. These results are discussed in light of current approaches to the variability of infant-directed registers, and their attractiveness to infants.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…As in speech, infants prefer ID over AD versions of songs [10]. On the other hand, singing generally differs from speaking in that sung vowels usually display more stable f0 contours, and that they are longer and less variable in duration [11,12]. ID singing also features higher metrical regularity ("beat structure") than ID speech [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vowel space and f0 characteristics of infant-directed singing and speech

Audibert

Falk

2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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“…First results showed a trend for infants at 11 months of age to process word-related information in song better than in speech. 144 Rhythmic structure may also facilitate infants' discrimination of infant-directed singing from speech, 145 and foster the development of more musical and more speechrelated sound processing. Yet, unique contributions of the rhythm of singing to infants' language and musical skills still await further investigation.…”

Section: Babbling and Stutteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Ravignani

Bella

Falk

et al. 2019

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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Why does human speech have rhythm? As we cannot travel back in time to witness how speech developed its rhythmic properties and why humans have the cognitive skills to process them, we rely on alternative methods to find out. One powerful tool is the comparative approach: studying the presence or absence of cognitive/behavioral traits in other species to determine which traits are shared between species and which are recent human inventions. Vocalizations of many species exhibit temporal structure, but little is known about how these rhythmic structures evolved, are perceived and produced, their biological and developmental bases, and communicative functions. We review the literature on rhythm in speech and animal vocalizations as a first step toward understanding similarities and differences across species. We extend this review to quantitative techniques that are useful for computing rhythmic structure in acoustic sequences and hence facilitate cross‐species research. We report links between vocal perception and motor coordination and the differentiation of rhythm based on hierarchical temporal structure. While still far from a complete cross‐species perspective of speech rhythm, our review puts some pieces of the puzzle together.

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“…Premature infants, for instance, increase pacified sucking movements when given musical reinforcement consisting of ID singing (Standley et al, 2010). Infants perceive ID singing as different from ID speech, and they attend to singing more (Costa-Giomi, 2014;Nakata & Trehub, 2004) or at least as much as they attend to ID speech (Costa-Giomi & Ilari, 2014;Tsang, Falk, & Hessel, 2016).…”

Section: Infants and Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant Vocal Imitation of Music

Benetti

Costa‐Giomi

2019

Journal of Research in Music Education

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Infant vocal production has been studied mainly from the perspective of language development. We studied it from the perspective of singing development by analyzing a 15-month-old’s imitations of songs. The infant wore a recording device that yielded a continuous, 16-hr audio recording of all the sounds produced by him and around him throughout the day. We listened to the audio file and identified instances in which his unprompted vocalizations resembled songs he had heard earlier. One imitation was recognized by his father, who then sang the song himself and engaged in imitative turn taking with the infant; the other imitation went unnoticed by his parents. Perceptual and acoustic analyses of the imitations and the song models showed that the infant imitated critical music features of the songs, including pitches, intervals, and rhythms. We discuss the use of new technologies for the study of singing development in infancy; such technologies facilitate the collection of spontaneous vocalizations that may go unnoticed by parents and make it possible to trace connections between music environment opportunities and specific singing outcomes in infants.

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Infants Prefer Infant‐Directed Song Over Speech

Cited by 39 publications

References 67 publications

Vowel space and f0 characteristics of infant-directed singing and speech

Vowel space and f0 characteristics of infant-directed singing and speech

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

Infant Vocal Imitation of Music

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