Paralinguistic Features of Adult Speech to Infants and Small Children

Jacobson, Joseph L.; Boersma, David C.; Fields, Robert B.; Olson, Karen L.

doi:10.2307/1129704

Cited by 91 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Initially termed 'baby talk' (Ferguson, 1964), later 'motherese', and then 'parentese' (Fernald, 1985;Fernald et al, 1989;Grieser & Kuhl, 1988), this speech register is distinguished from adult-directed speech (ADS) by a variety of segmental and prosodic features, including higher overall pitch and wider pitch range, slowed speech rate, exaggerated intonation contours, fewer and simpler lexical items, shorter utterances, and longer pauses between phrases (Cooper & Aslin, 1990;Fernald, 1985;Fernald et al, 1989;Fernald & Simon, 1984;Garnica, 1977;Grieser & Kuhl, 1988;Stern et al, 1983;Tang & Maidment, 1996). Infant-directed speech is used across cultures in spoken and signed languages by parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, and adults who do not have their own children (Ferguson, 1964;Jacobson et al, 1983;Kuhl et al, 1997;Reilly & Bellugi, 1996). Across different languages, similarities and differences have been observed in specific linguistic aspects of IDS (Broesch & Bryant, 2015;Han et al, 2020;Narayan & McDermott, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fathers' infant‐directed speech and its effects on child language development

Ramírez

2022

Language and Linguist. Compass

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Infant-directed speech (IDS), a speaking style distinguished by its higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation, has been documented in speech directed towards infants across many cultures and languages. Previous research shows that IDS in the context of parent-infant interactions is associated with advances in children's language learning. While we have long known that fathers, like mothers, produce IDS, most research on IDS to this day has focussed exclusively on female (maternal) speech. In light of the recent societal changes which have increased fathers' time spent in handson activities with children, I argue that the research on IDS needs to move away from using the maternal template. I first describe why IDS plays a central role in language development. I then outline known similarities and differences between paternal and maternal IDS, and point to potential biases and challenges within the research that has been conducted so far. Finally, I outline why investigators should strive to include fathers in research on IDS, and conclude with recommendations for follow-up work that can help advance our understanding of fathers' contributions to children's linguistic development.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fathers' infant‐directed speech and its effects on child language development

Ramírez

2022

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…Mothers across cultures speak and sing to their pre-verbal infants in the course of providing care (Fernald, 1992; Trehub and Trainor, 1998; Dissanayake, 2000; Trehub, 2000). Their manner of speaking or singing to infants (infant-directed or ID) differs dramatically from their manner in other contexts (adult-directed or AD; self-directed or non-ID)(Ferguson, 1964; Jacobson et al, 1983; Fernald and Simon, 1984; Trainor et al, 1997; Trehub et al, 1997a,b), with notable variations across cultures (Grieser and Kuhl, 1988; Fernald et al, 1989; Kitamura et al, 2002). In general, ID speech features higher pitch, expanded pitch contours, slower speaking rate, longer vowels, larger dynamic range, and greater rhythmicity and repetition than AD speech (Stern et al, 1982, 1983; Fernald and Simon, 1984; Fernald et al, 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech vs. singing: infants choose happier sounds

Corbeil¹,

Trehub²,

Peretz³

2013

Front. Psychol.

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Infants prefer speech to non-vocal sounds and to non-human vocalizations, and they prefer happy-sounding speech to neutral speech. They also exhibit an interest in singing, but there is little knowledge of their relative interest in speech and singing. The present study explored infants' attention to unfamiliar audio samples of speech and singing. In Experiment 1, infants 4–13 months of age were exposed to happy-sounding infant-directed speech vs. hummed lullabies by the same woman. They listened significantly longer to the speech, which had considerably greater acoustic variability and expressiveness, than to the lullabies. In Experiment 2, infants of comparable age who heard the lyrics of a Turkish children's song spoken vs. sung in a joyful/happy manner did not exhibit differential listening. Infants in Experiment 3 heard the happily sung lyrics of the Turkish children's song vs. a version that was spoken in an adult-directed or affectively neutral manner. They listened significantly longer to the sung version. Overall, happy voice quality rather than vocal mode (speech or singing) was the principal contributor to infant attention, regardless of age.

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“…Children's uncertainty about questions and statements in the region of the category boundary is consistent with their lesser accuracy than adults in identifying questions from full, unaltered utterances (Saindon et al, 2016) and their considerably lesser skill in using preterminal cues to utterance type (Saindon et al, 2017). Because children are more successful at identifying questions and statements in child-directed than in adult-directed utterances (Saindon et al, 2017), the former featuring exaggerated prosodic cues (Foulkes et al, 2005;Jacobson et al, 1983), it is possible that their identification functions for child-directed utterances would be steeper and more adultlike than those observed in the present study. Note, however, that children's perception of emotional prosody exhibits a very protracted course of development, with 13-yr-olds performing below adult levels (Aguert et al, 2013).…”

Section: Discusssion and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Children's and adults' perception of questions and statements from terminal fundamental frequency contours

Saindon

Cirelli

Schellenberg

et al. 2017

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The present study compared children's and adults' identification and discrimination of declarative questions and statements on the basis of terminal cues alone. Children (8-11 years, n = 41) and adults (n = 21) judged utterances as statements or questions from sentences with natural statement and question endings and with manipulated endings that featured intermediate fundamental frequency (F) values. The same adults and a different sample of children (n = 22) were also tested on their discrimination of the utterances. Children's judgments shifted more gradually across categories than those of adults, but their category boundaries were comparable. In the discrimination task, adults found cross-boundary comparisons more salient than within-boundary comparisons. Adults' performance on the identification and discrimination tasks is consistent with but not definitive regarding categorical perception of statements and questions. Children, by contrast, discriminated the cross-boundary comparisons no better than other comparisons. The findings indicate age-related sharpening in the perception of statements and questions based on terminal F cues and the gradual emergence of distinct perceptual categories.

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Paralinguistic Features of Adult Speech to Infants and Small Children

Cited by 91 publications

References 0 publications

Fathers' infant‐directed speech and its effects on child language development

Fathers' infant‐directed speech and its effects on child language development

Speech vs. singing: infants choose happier sounds

Children's and adults' perception of questions and statements from terminal fundamental frequency contours

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