Of Human Bonding: Newborns Prefer Their Mothers' Voices

DeCasper, Anthony J.; Fifer, William P.

doi:10.1126/science.7375928

Cited by 1,925 publications

(972 citation statements)

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“…Consistent with the face interest literature, newborn infants exhibit a preference for listening to their mother's voice, rather than a female stranger's voice (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980), and for listening to speech in their mother's language (Moon, Cooper & Fifer, 1993).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Infant face interest is associated with voice information and maternal psychological health

Taylor

Slade

Herbert

2014

Infant Behavior and Development

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Early infant interest in their mother's face is driven by an experience based face processing system, and is associated with maternal psychological health, even within a non clinical community sample. The present study examined the role of the voice in eliciting infants' interest in mother and stranger faces and in the association between infant face interest and maternal psychological health.Infants aged 3.5-months were shown photographs of their mother's and a stranger's face paired with an audio recording of their mother's and a stranger's voice that was either matched (e.g., mother's face and voice) or mismatched (e.g., mother's face and stranger's voice). Infants spent more time attending to the stranger's matched face and voice than the mother's matched face and voice and the mismatched faces and voices. Thus, infants demonstrated an earlier preference for a stranger's face when given voice information than when the face is presented alone. In the present sample, maternal psychological health varied with 56.7% of mothers reporting mild mood symptoms (depression, anxiety or stress response to childbirth). Infants of mothers with significant mild maternal mood symptoms looked longer at the faces and voices compared to infants of mothers who did not report mild maternal mood symptoms. In sum, infants' experience based face processing system is sensitive to their mothers' maternal psychological health and the multimodal nature of faces. Early infant interest in their mother's face is driven by an experience based face processing system, and is associated with maternal psychological health, even within a non clinical community sample. The present study examined the role of the voice in eliciting infants' interest in mother and stranger faces and in the association between infant face interest and maternal psychological health.Infants aged 3.5-months were shown photographs of their mother's and a stranger's face paired with an audio recording of their mother's and a stranger's voice that was either matched (e.g., mother's face and voice) or mismatched (e.g., mother's face and stranger's voice). Infants spent more time attending to the stranger's matched face and voice than the mother's matched face and voice and the mismatched faces and voices. Thus, infants demonstrated an earlier preference for a stranger's face when given voice information than when the face is presented alone. In the present sample, maternal psychological health varied with 56.7% of mothers reporting mild mood symptoms (depression, anxiety or stress response to childbirth). Infants of mothers with significant mild maternal mood symptoms looked longer at the faces and voices compared to infants of mothers who did not report mild maternal mood symptoms. In sum, infants' experience based face processing system is sensitive to their mothers' maternal psychological health and the multimodal nature of faces.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Infant face interest is associated with voice information and maternal psychological health

Taylor

Slade

Herbert

2014

Infant Behavior and Development

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“…In the third trimester of pregnancy, the human fetus has the capacity to process perceptual information [1][2][3]. With advances in 4D ultrasound technology, detailed assessment of fetal behavior [4] is now possible.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Human Fetus Preferentially Engages with Face-like Visual Stimuli

et al. 2017

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“…First, to determine whether the tokens from the different talkers were discriminable for the infants, we tested another group of infants on a contrast not involving a phonetic change, but rather a difference between two talkers. Several previous studies have examined the ability of infants to detect differences in talkers' voices, but these studies used speech samples longer than a single syllable (e.g., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980;Kaplan, 1969;Turnure, 1971). In the present case, the syllable type (e.g., /d∧g/) was the same for both phases of the experiment, but the identity of the talker was changed after habituation to the first syllable.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…However, there is ample evidence to believe that this is not the case. Studies with newborn infants show them to be capable of recognizing their mothers' voices from those of other mothers (e.g., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980;Mehler, Bertoncini, Barriere, & Jassik-Gerschenfeld, 1978;Mills & Meluish, 1974). Moreover, 6-month-olds are able to perform a task that requires responding to tokens produced by a particular talker as opposed to another talker (Miller, Younger, & Morse, 1982).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

1992

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The present study explores how stimulus variability in speech production influences the 2-monthold infant's perception and memory for speech sounds. Experiment 1 focuses on the consequences of talker variability for the infant's ability to detect differences between speech sounds. When tested with high-amplitude sucking (HAS) procedure, infants who listened to versions of a syllable, such as /b∧g/, produced by 6 male and 6 female talkers, detected a change to another syllable, such as /d∧g/, uttered by the same group of talkers. In fact, infants exposed to multiple talkers performed as well as other infants who heard utterances produced by only a single talker. Moreover, other results showed that infants discriminate the voices of the individual talkers, although discriminating one mixed group of talkers (3 males and 3 females) from another is too difficult for them. Experiment 2 explored the consequences of talker variability on infants' memory for speech sounds. The HAS procedure was modified by introducing a 2-min delay period between the familiarization and test phases of the experiment. Talker variability impeded infants' encoding of speech sounds. Infants who heard versions of the same syllable produced by 12 different talkers did not detect a change to a new syllable produced by the same talkers after the delay period. However, infants who heard the same syllable produced by a single talker were able to detect the phonetic change after the delay. Finally, although infants who heard productions from a single talker retained information about the phonetic structure of the syllable during the delay, they apparently did not retain information about the identity of the talker. Experiment 3 reduced the range of variability across talkers and investigated whether variability interferes with retention of all speech information. Although reducing the range of variability did not lead to retention of phonetic details, infants did recognize a change in the gender of the talkers' voices (from male to female or vice versa) after a 2-min delay. Two additional experiments explored the consequences of limiting the variability to a single talker. In Experiment 4, with an immediate testing procedure, infants exposed to 12 different tokens of one syllable produced by the same talker discriminated

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Of Human Bonding: Newborns Prefer Their Mothers' Voices

Cited by 1,925 publications

References 9 publications

Infant face interest is associated with voice information and maternal psychological health

Infant face interest is associated with voice information and maternal psychological health

The Human Fetus Preferentially Engages with Face-like Visual Stimuli

Some consequences of stimulus variability on speech processing by 2-month-old infants

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