A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication

Werker, Janet F.; Pegg, Judith E.; McLeod, Peter

doi:10.1016/0163-6383(94)90012-4

Cited by 146 publications

(118 citation statements)

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“…(See, e.g., Cristia 2013;Soderstrom 2007 for reviews of IDS properties.) Some researchers have suggested that IDS modifications occur to promote language acquisition (Werker et al 1994), for example by highlighting phonetic parameters that carry phonemic distinctions in a language (Kuhl et al 1997, Kuhl et al 2008 or by facilitating word recognition and word segmentation by infants (Thiessen et al 2005;Singh et al 2009;Song et al 2010). In any case, the stronger attention that infants pay to IDS could increase the opportunity for the features of IDS to influence language learning, even beyond what might be expected from the relative frequency with which infants hear this type of speech (de Boer 2005).…”

Section: Phonetic Variation In Infant-directed Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexically conditioned phonetic variation in motherese: age-of-acquisition and other word-specific factors in infant- and adult-directed speech

Zellou

Scarborough

2015

Laboratory Phonology

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Words produced to infants exhibit phonetic modifications relative to speech to adult interlocutors, such as longer, more canonical segments and prosodic enhancement. Meanwhile, within speech directed towards adults, phonetic variation is conditioned by word properties: lower word frequency and higher phonological neighborhood density (ND) correlate with increased hyperarticulation and degree of coarticulation. Both of these types of findings have interpretations that recruit listener-directed motivations, suggesting that talkers modify their speech in an effort to enhance the perceptibility of the speech signal. In that vein, the present study examines lexically-conditioned variation in infant-directed speech. Specifically, we predict that the adult-reported age at which a word was learned -lexical age-of-acquisition (AoA) -conditions phonetic variation in infant-directed speech. This prediction is indeed borne out in spontaneous infant-directed speech: later-acquired words are produced with more hyperarticulated vowels and a greater degree of nasal coarticulation. Meanwhile, ND predicts phonetic variation in data from spontaneous adultdirected speech, while AoA does not independently influence production. The patterns of findings in the current study support the stance that evaluation of the need for clarity is tuned to the listener. Lexical difficulty is evaluated by AoA in infant-directed speech, while ND is most relevant in adult-directed speech.

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Section: Phonetic Variation In Infant-directed Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexically conditioned phonetic variation in motherese: age-of-acquisition and other word-specific factors in infant- and adult-directed speech

Zellou

Scarborough

2015

Laboratory Phonology

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“…Infant-directed speech is the primary input at early stages of language acquisition: this special speech register is used by caregivers crosslinguistically (Fernald et al, 1989), and many studies show that infants have a clear preference for infant-directed over adult-directed speech (e.g. Cooper & Aslin, 1990;Fernald, 1985;Werker, Pegg & McLeod, 1994). Researchers have suggested different functions for this speech register, namely getting and keeping the infant's attention, expression of positive affect, and clarification to facilitate 6 language acquisition (Soderstrom, 2007).…”

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Pronunciation Variation in Infant-Directed Speech: Phonetic Reduction of Two Highly Frequent Words

Lahey

Ernestus

2013

Language Learning and Development

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In spontaneous conversations between adults, words are often pronounced with fewer segments or syllables than their citation forms. The question arises whether infant-directed speech also contains phonetic reduction. If so, infants would be presented with speech input that enables them to acquire reduced variants from an early age. This study compared speech directed at 11-and 12-month-old infants with adult-directed conversational speech and adult-directed read speech. In an acoustic study, 216 tokens of the Dutch words allemaal and helemaal from speech corpora were analyzed for duration, number of syllables and vowel quality. In a perception study, adult participants rated these same materials for reduction and provided phonetic transcriptions. The results show that these two words are frequently reduced in infant-directed speech, and that their degree of reduction is comparable to conversational adult-directed speech. These findings suggest that lexical representations for reduced pronunciation variants can be acquired early in linguistic development. 3An important component of language acquisition is the learning of words and their meanings.Before infants can attach meanings to words, they must acquire the ability to recognize a given word across different contexts. This is a complicated task, as each token of a word is acoustically different. Pronunciation variation can, for instance, be caused by speaker gender, voice characteristics and accent or dialectical variation. This raises the question of how infants learn to cope with pronunciation variation.In spontaneous conversations between adults, another common cause of pronunciation variation is reduction: words are often pronounced with fewer segments or syllables than their citation forms (for an introduction to the phenomenon of reduction, see Ernestus & Warner, 2011). For instance, the word yesterday can be pronounced in South-West American English as [jɛʃei]. Phonetic reduction leads to great variability in speech. Johnson (2004) showed that in a corpus of American English, no less than 20% of word tokens were pronounced with at least one segment missing, and 6% with at least one syllable missing. Similar results have been found for Dutch spontaneous speech (Schuppler, Ernestus, Scharenborg & Boves, 2011). In this study, we investigate whether highly reduced forms are prevalent in infant-directed speech, and we discuss the implications of this type of pronunciation variation for the building of a lexicon.Despite the high frequency of occurrence of reduced pronunciation variants, these forms normally do not seem to hinder communication. Adult listeners appear to understand these variants without any problem, at least when they are heard in context (Ernestus, Baayen & Schreuder, 2002). This raises the question of when infants can start learning to process reduced variants. In this study we investigated whether words are also reduced in speech to 11-and 12-month-old infants, that is whether highly reduced pronunciation variants occur in infant-di...

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“…People tend to talk differently to infants than they do to other adults (Ferguson, 1964;Fernald, 1991;Papousek, 1992;Werker, Pegg, & McLeod, 1994), and the acoustic features of such infant-directed (ID) speech have been well documented. As compared with adult-directed (AD) speech, ID speech is high in pitch and has exaggerated pitch contours (e.g., Fernald & Simon, 1984;Papousek, Papousek, & Haekel, 1987).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…ID speech has intrigued researchers for several reasons: (1) It is produced not only by mothers, but also by children, fathers, and other adults who have had little experience with infants (J. Dunn & Kendrick, 1982;Fernald et al, 1989;Trehub, Trainor, & Unyk, 1993), (2) The acoustic modifications of ID speech are similar across languagesand cultures (Ferguson, 1964;Fernald, 1991;Fernald et al, 1989;Papousek, 1992;Werker et al, 1994), and (3) infants prefer to listen to ID over AD speech (e.g., Cooper & Aslin, 1990;Fernald, 1985;Werker & McLeod, 1989). In this paper, we examine the effects of the high pitch and exaggerated pitch contours of ID speech on vowel discrimination in 6-month-old infants.…”

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Pitch characteristics of infant-directed speech affect infants’ ability to discriminate vowels

Trainor

Desjardins

2002

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

152

132

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"Baby talk" or speech directedto prelinguisticinfants is high in pitch and has exaggeratedpitch contours (up/down patterns of pitch change) across languages and cultures. Using an acoustic model, we predicted that the large pitch contours of infant-directed speech should improve infants' ability to discriminate vowels. On the other hand, the same model predicted that high pitch would not benefit, and might actually impair, infants' ability to discriminate vowels. We then confirmed these predictions experimentally. We conclude that the exaggerated pitch contours of infant-directed speech aid infants' acquisition of vowel categories but that the high pitch of infant-directed speech must serve another function, such as attracting infants' attention or aiding emotional communication.

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A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication

Cited by 146 publications

References 44 publications

Lexically conditioned phonetic variation in motherese: age-of-acquisition and other word-specific factors in infant- and adult-directed speech

Lexically conditioned phonetic variation in motherese: age-of-acquisition and other word-specific factors in infant- and adult-directed speech

Pronunciation Variation in Infant-Directed Speech: Phonetic Reduction of Two Highly Frequent Words

Pitch characteristics of infant-directed speech affect infants’ ability to discriminate vowels

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