Preference for Infant-directed Speech in the First Month after Birth

Abstract

2 experiments examined behavioral preferences for infant-directed (ID) speech over adult-directed (AD) speech in young infants. Using a modification of the visual-fixation-based auditory-preference procedure, Experiments 1 and 2 examined whether 12 1-month-old and 16 2-day-old infants looked longer at a visual stimulus when looking produced ID as opposed to AD speech. The results showed that both 1-month-olds and newborns preferred ID over AD speech. Although the absolute magnitude of the ID speech preference was significantly greater, with the older infants showing longer looking durations than the younger infants, subsequent analyses showed no significant difference in the relative magnitude of this effect. Differences in overall looking times between the 2 groups apparently reflect task variables rather than differences in speech processing. These results suggest that infants' preference for the exaggerated prosodic features of ID speech is present from birth and may not depend on any specific postnatal experience. However, the possible role of prenatal auditory experience with speech is considered.

Infants’ use and weighting of prosodic cues in clause segmentation

“…For example, Bosch and Sebastián-Gallés (1997) find that 4-month-old Spanish infants are able to discriminate between two rhythmically similar but intonationally distinct languages (Spanish and Catalan), when all segmental information is removed. In addition, young infants show a clear preference for infant-directed over adult-directed speech (Cooper & Aslin, 1990) and are able to distinguish vowel quality changes more easily when pitch is exaggerated (Trainor & Desjardins, 1990), showing an attentiveness to pitch even in the presence of other information.…”

Implications of Timing of Maternal Depressive Symptoms for Early Cognitive and Language Development

“…Infant-directed speech, often called "motherese" or "parentese," differs from adult-directed speech in that parents use a greatly exaggerated prosody (Kaplan, Bachorowski, Smoski, & Hudenko, 2002). Infant-directed speech is more effective in eliciting infant attention (Cooper & Aslin, 1990). The combination of flat affect, less animation, and a lack of infant-directed speech have been linked to less associative learning among infants of depressed mothers (Kaplan et al, 2002).…”

Validation of the LittlEARS® Auditory Questionnaire in children with normal hearing

“…With continuing development, auditory behaviour can also be detected using visual reinforcement and conditional behavioural responses [19]. Infants clearly show preference to their mother's voice and are able to recognise rhymes and melodies as well as to use sentence prosody in order to discriminate words [20][21][22]. Newborns also show the ability to discriminate suprasegmental, prosodic features [23,24] and infants can discriminate phonetic components of a language [24,25].…”