Emergence of Functional Flexibility in Infant Vocalizations of the First 3 Months

Jhang, Yuna; Oller, D. Kimbrough

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00300

Cited by 34 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Another example: a fussy protophone, not directed toward anyone, can be treated as having the illocutionary force of complaint. Pre-linguistic infants express varying illocutionary forces and varying emotional content (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) in early protophones beginning at birth [53,65] (see Appendix D of S1 Data). This fact indicates that infants have the capacity to produce a single protophone type with different illocutionary forces on different occasions, indicating they possess a vocal capability that is, of course, required of all words and sentences in mature language.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A fundamental question that requires answering based on the present work is: If protophones are not directed to caregivers, what is their purpose from a developmental or an evolutionary standpoint? What advantage could be associated with producing vocal sounds that are largely affectively neutral, produced most commonly in apparent comfort, but without social directivity [53,65]?…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

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Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

et al. 2020

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Research on infant vocal development has provided notable insights into vocal interaction with caregivers, elucidating growth in foundations for language through parental elicitation and reaction to vocalizations. A role for infant vocalizations produced endogenously, potentially providing raw material for interaction and a basis for growth in the vocal capacity itself, has received less attention. We report that in laboratory recordings of infants and their parents, the bulk of infant speech-like vocalizations, or "protophones", were directed toward no one and instead appeared to be generated endogenously, mostly in exploration of vocal abilities. The tendency to predominantly produce protophones without directing them to others occurred both during periods when parents were instructed to interact with their infants and during periods when parents were occupied with an interviewer, with the infants in the room. The results emphasize the infant as an agent in vocal learning, even when not interacting socially and suggest an enhanced perspective on foundations for vocal language.

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Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

et al. 2020

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“…Our research suggests that in the evolution of human language, a key foundational divergence from the primate background may have involved an increasing tendency in the hominin line to vocalize freely, not in the form of language, but in exploratory vocalization with flexible vocal expression of emotional states (Oller, 2000; Oller and Griebel, 2008). In part, this line of reasoning is inspired by the fact that human infants begin life already producing copious exploratory and functionally flexible vocalization (Stark et al, 1975; Koopmans-van Beinum and van der Stelt, 1986; Nathani et al, 2006; Oller et al, 2013; Jhang and Oller, 2017). Such sounds are not language, but the ability and the inclination to produce them flexibly and extensively form crucial foundations for language (Oller, 1981; Koopmans-van Beinum and van der Stelt, 1986; Locke, 1993; Griebel and Oller, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the first half year of life, protophones such as vowel-like sounds (hereafter “vocants”), squeals, growls, and raspberries, without the well-formed consonant-vowel-like components of canonical babbling, have been argued to form foundations for all subsequent vocal development necessary for language, including canonical babbling ( Oller, 1980; Koopmans-van Beinum and van der Stelt, 1986). These early protophone sounds, like canonical babbling, are typically produced exploratorily and can accompany the full range of positive to neutral to negative affect as reflected in facial expression (Oller et al, 2013; Jhang and Oller, 2017), and although they usually occur at low or moderate arousal, they can also accompany intense emotion and high arousal. It is a requirement of language that all words or sentences be producible at will, at any point that a speaker chooses to produce them, regardless of emotional state or external circumstance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Origins Viewed in Spontaneous and Interactive Vocal Rates of Human and Bonobo Infants

et al. 2019

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From the first months of life, human infants produce “protophones,” speech-like, non-cry sounds, presumed absent, or only minimally present in other apes. But there have been no direct quantitative comparisons to support this presumption. In addition, by 2 months, human infants show sustained face-to-face interaction using protophones, a pattern thought also absent or very limited in other apes, but again, without quantitative comparison. Such comparison should provide evidence relevant to determining foundations of language, since substantially flexible vocalization, the inclination to explore vocalization, and the ability to interact socially by means of vocalization are foundations for language. Here we quantitatively compare data on vocalization rates in three captive bonobo ( Pan paniscus ) mother–infant pairs with various sources of data from our laboratories on human infant vocalization. Both humans and bonobos produced distress sounds (cries/screams) and laughter. The bonobo infants also produced sounds that were neither screams nor laughs and that showed acoustic similarities to the human protophones. These protophone-like sounds confirm that bonobo infants share with humans the capacity to produce vocalizations that appear foundational for language. Still, there were dramatic differences between the species in both quantity and function of the protophone and protophone-like sounds. The bonobo protophone-like sounds were far less frequent than the human protophones, and the human protophones were far less likely to be interpreted as complaints and more likely as vocal play. Moreover, we found extensive vocal interaction between human infants and mothers, but no vocal interaction in the bonobo mother–infant pairs—while bonobo mothers were physically responsive to their infants, we observed no case of a bonobo mother vocalization directed to her infant. Our cross-species comparison focuses on low- and moderate-arousal circumstances because we reason the roots of language entail vocalization not triggered by excitement, for example, during fighting or intense play. Language appears to be founded in flexible vocalization, used to regulate comfortable social interaction, to share variable affective states at various levels of arousal, and to explore vocalization itself.

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“… 3 More recent work from our group showed that flexible relations of protophones with neutral and negative facial affect also occurred in infants from 0 to 3 months of age (positive facial expressions were rare in these very young infants) ( Jhang and Oller, 2017 ). …”

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confidence: 98%

Differing Roles of the Face and Voice in Early Human Communication: Roots of Language in Multimodal Expression

et al. 2017

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Seeking roots of language, we probed infant facial expressions and vocalizations. Both have roles in language, but the voice plays an especially flexible role, expressing a variety of functions and affect conditions with the same vocal categories—a word can be produced with many different affective flavors. This requirement of language is seen in very early infant vocalizations. We examined the extent to which affect is transmitted by early vocal categories termed “protophones” (squeals, vowel-like sounds, and growls) and by their co-occurring facial expressions, and similarly the extent to which vocal type is transmitted by the voice and co-occurring facial expressions. Our coder agreement data suggest infant affect during protophones was most reliably transmitted by the face (judged in video-only), while vocal type was transmitted most reliably by the voice (judged in audio-only). Voice alone transmitted negative affect more reliably than neutral or positive affect, suggesting infant protophones may be used especially to call for attention when the infant is in distress. By contrast, the face alone provided no significant information about protophone categories. Indeed coders in VID could scarcely recognize the difference between silence and voice when coding protophones in VID. The results suggest that partial decoupling of communicative roles for face and voice occurs even in the first months of life. Affect in infancy appears to be transmitted in a way that audio and video aspects are flexibly interwoven, as in mature language.

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Emergence of Functional Flexibility in Infant Vocalizations of the First 3 Months

Cited by 34 publications

References 37 publications

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

Language Origins Viewed in Spontaneous and Interactive Vocal Rates of Human and Bonobo Infants

Differing Roles of the Face and Voice in Early Human Communication: Roots of Language in Multimodal Expression

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