“Motherese” Prosody in Fetal-Directed Speech: An Exploratory Study Using Automatic Social Signal Processing

Abstract

Introduction: Motherese, or emotional infant directed speech (IDS), is the specific form of speech used by parents to address their infants. The prosody of IDS has affective properties, expresses caregiver involvement, is a marker of caregiver-infant interaction quality. IDS prosodic characteristics can be detected with automatic analysis. We aimed to explore whether pregnant women “speak” to their unborn baby, whether they use motherese while speaking and whether anxio-depressive or obstetrical status impacts speaking to the fetus.Participants and Methods: We conducted an observational study of pregnant women with gestational ages from 26 to 38 weeks. Women were recruited in a university hospital department of obstetrics. Thirty-five women agreed to participate in the study, and 26 audio records were exploitable. We collected obstetrical and sociodemographic data, pregnancy outcomes, anxiety and depressive status using the Covy and Raskin Scales, and life events using the Sensations During Pregnancy and Life Event Questionnaire. Each participant was left alone with an audio recorder with a recommendation to feel free to speak to her fetus as she would have done at home. The recording was stopped after 3 min. Audio recordings were analyzed by two methods: psycholinguist experts' annotation and computational objective automatic analyses.Results: Most mothers (89%) reported speaking to their fetuses. We found a correlation between maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and the start of mother's speaking to fetus. Motherese prosody was detected with both annotation and automatic analysis with a significant correlation between the two methods. In this exploratory study, motherese use was not associated with maternal anxiodepressive or obstetrical status. However, the more future mothers were depressed, the less they spoke with their fetuses during the recording.Conclusion: Fetal directed speech (FDS) can be detected during pregnancy, and it contains a period of prosody that shares the same characteristics of motherese that can be described as prenatal motherese or emotional fetal-directed speech (e-FDS). This means that pregnant women start using motherese much earlier than expected. FDS seems to be correlated with maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and depression scores. However, more research is needed to confirm these exploratory results.

Level of Attention to Motherese Speech as an Early Marker of Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…The animated speech style known as motherese can be found across cultures and languages, 60 is evident between deaf mothers and their deaf children, 61 , 62 and has even been noted to occur while fetuses are still in the womb. 63 Likely genetic, motherese is more than a speech style; it is a tool for reciprocal engagement that enhances social and language development, with infants often matching the fundamental frequencies and voice pitch of their mothers. 64 Using gaze-contingent eye tracking that allowed toddlers to control the images and sounds they heard, we found that similar to toddlers who are typically developing or non–ASD delayed, the majority of toddlers with ASD attended to motherese speech at high levels.…”

“…The animated speech style known as motherese can be found across cultures and languages, is evident between deaf mothers and their deaf children, and has even been noted to occur while fetuses are still in the womb . Likely genetic, motherese is more than a speech style; it is a tool for reciprocal engagement that enhances social and language development, with infants often matching the fundamental frequencies and voice pitch of their mothers .…”

The Musical Turn in Biosemiotics

“…6 There are a few related conversations concerning communication that blends features of both language and music. First, concerning motherese, a form of speech which utilizes emotional and prosodic attributes meant to engage infants' (as well as domestic animals') attention (Nikolsky, 2020;Parlato-Oliveira et al, 2021;Xiao et al, 2022). A second frequently discussed concept is musilanguage, the hypothesis that language and music share a common expressive and communicative ancestor in human evolution (Brown, 2001).…”

Your phrases matter: Third waves in research approaches and new contexts for formulaic language

“…The pitch and prosodic characteristics of infant-directed speech, particularly as it may be emotional, are currently of interest in examining mothers' speech to as-yet unborn children (Parlato-Oliveira et al, 2021;see Saint-Georges et al, 2013, for a systematic review that includes a discussion of just what may be enclosed in prosodic boundaries). Ota et al (2018) illustrate the importance of reduplication or diminutive endings of words in frequently repeated formulaic sequences in a baby talk register-which can surface as well in terms of endearment and pet-directed speech.…”

“…The pitch and prosodic characteristics of infant‐directed speech, particularly as it may be emotional, are currently of interest in examining mothers’ speech to as‐yet unborn children (Parlato‐Oliveira et al., 2021; see Saint‐Georges et al., 2013, for a systematic review that includes a discussion of just what may be enclosed in prosodic boundaries). Ota et al.…”